Tangerine Lark
by whereistruth
Summary: Sequel to "Beloved." Remus and Severus are bound together by a girl decades past, but she is far from long gone. OotP spoilers, beware!
1. Bound

**Author's Note: This is a sequel to the story "Beloved."  If you haven't read it, I suggest you at least skim it.  As an author, I'd sort of like it if you actually read it, but hey—I'm not a nag.  This is set after OotP and there are spoilers.  If you haven't read it, you may want to proceed with caution.  Happy reading.**

            They had been bound by their common cause for so long, it was hard for them to accept a new definition, to accept their most recent loss.

            But in a room full of people bound by the death of one of their own, there were two who had been tied by a shared loss, defined by a death, for nearly two decades.

            Sirius's death didn't cause Severus grief; on the contrary, the first thing he felt was a curious sense of relief, followed immediately by a self-loathing so strong it made him sick.  The adult, he knew, should not hold grudges of the adolescent, but he'd been unable to shed old fears and old scars.  But by looking at his fellow members of the Order of the Phoenix, fully aware they did not all trust him, Severus Snape finally found a way to feel the loss of Sirius: As one more fighter lost.

            Remus rubbed his hands over his eyes, feeling wrinkles at the corners that hadn't been there only weeks before.  He was the last of them, then, the last of the Marauders with James and Sirius dead and Peter as good as.  The one whose long nights of full moons had drawn them all together was the only one left.

            Two men in a room full of the grieving, each feeling things in their own way, remembered the first loss they had felt, the one they had shared, and when ebony eyes met with gray-green across the somber room, both were sad.

~~~

            He had a secret.

            It was no surprise, really, that a man with no true friends and spying as an avocation would have a secret.  In truth, he had many, but there was one he held close to him as his purpose, one he kept in the forefront of his mind when he became unsure of the path he'd most recently chosen.

            Dea had died at the hands of Death Eaters.

            There were mornings, grim with fear of things to come and unable to see any hope for the future, that Severus wished he'd never stumbled upon that particular bit of information, that a talent for both Ligilimency and Occlumency had come to someone else.  But they hadn't, and it had been from the rotting, perverse mind of Lucius Malfoy that Severus had accidentally plucked the facts of Dea's death.

            And it took no more than that for him to switch sides. 

            He told no one his secret, not even Albus.  It was his mission, and keeping it to himself only gave him more purpose.

            The last thing he looked at before closing his eyes and clearing his mind before sleep was a mortar and pestle, flecked with green and black and kept flawlessly clean.

~~~

             In his office, already dressed for bed, Albus Dumbledore held his own secret; a ragged piece of parchment, carried miles and miles by a particularly determined owl, sat on his desk, casting a small spot of golden-orange light in the air above it.

            _I know what you're doing, _the precise script read.  _And though it may sound presumptuous, I think you could use my help._  It was signed not with a name, but with the word "Beloved," a glowing orange heart branded aside it.

            Nothing was impossible, the old wizard mused, striking long fingers over his white beard.  In fact, nothing was even improbable.  His mouth curved into a hopeful smile, he composed a letter and sent it out immediately.

            "It's time for a full Order meeting, Fawkes," he said, running a finger over the bird's head.

~~~

            Remus had been expecting a full meeting, but not so soon after Sirius's death.  They had gained a few members since the Ministry had acknowledged Voldemort's return, but caution was still the group's byword, especially now that they'd lost a member.  

            Remus was now tender of the Black house, being the only member without other obligations.  It was the last remaining piece of Padfoot, and even his mother's portrait seemed more subdued with him gone.  

            With a sigh, Remus withdrew his wand and readied the house for the meeting, expanding rooms and conjuring chairs as he saw fit.  By the time he'd made enough accommodations, he was tired, his head aching.  He wasn't quite sure how Molly always made it look so easy, but he was quite certain he'd kiss her feet next time she took care of matters.

            Though his schedule was undoubtedly fuller than any of the other members, Dumbledore arrived first, conjuring his own chair and an ever-present dish of candy.  "How are you, Remus?" he asked, settling himself comfortably and giving in to his sweet tooth.  His tone was somber but his eyes were bright, and the duality made Remus nervous.

            "As well as can be expected," he said cautiously.  "Every one of my closest friends is gone to me."

            "True friends are never truly gone, Remus.  There are also many opportunities in this life to forge new friendships."  As though to affirm his statement, the door to Number 12 opened and shut.  

            The Order was convening.

~~~

            Severus sat perfectly still, hands clasped on the arms of the chair he sat in, while the rest of them chatted, milled around, or ate.  He could never understand how they viewed these meetings as social functions.  Perhaps, he thought, if they attended a congregation of Death Eaters, they'd learn a thing or two about efficiency.  

            "Was there a purpose for this meeting, Albus?"  He spoke quietly, knowing the wizard would hear him regardless of the volume.

            From across the noisy room where he was picking through a plate of biscuits, Albus looked up at the Potions teacher and nodded.  

            "I received a message last evening," Albus announced, amplifying his voice magically so that everyone in the room quieted.  "An anonymous message that seems to infer a wish to enter the Order."

            "This isn't a bloody Gobstones club," Mundungus Fletcher said, fiddling with his pipe.  "Whoever they are must be mad to think we'd accept an anonymous entrant."

            "Mad," Dumbledore agreed.  "Or presumptuous."  

            The word didn't escape Remus Lupin, whose eyes narrowed.  

            Dumbledore withdrew the tattered parchment from his robes, the glow of it now nearly extinguished, and laid it on an empty chair in the middle of the room.  "I'd like you each to have a look at it and tell me what you think."

            The Weasleys, quick to everything they did, stepped forward first, each of them stepping back after only a moment with a frown.  One by one, everyone did the same.  Only Minerva McGonagall showed any reaction; she looked as though she were searching for a memory just beyond her reach.

            Remus watched as Severus stepped to the chair and stumbled back almost immediately.  "Someone has very poor taste in humor," he said finally, composing himself.  But his uncharacteristic shock was lost neither on the group nor on Remus, who stepped forward next.

            "Oh, Merlin," he whispered, reaching out a finger to touch the glowing heart.  The parchment was snatched away from him by Severus, whose eyes had narrowed to little more than slits in his angular face.

            Dumbledore stepped gracefully between them, his face a portrait in diplomacy.  "Everyone, I'd like to speak to you all about our numbers.  We will soon be waging a battle bloodier than the one that came before, and elite though we are, we cannot go it alone."  He looked at each member of the Order in turn.  "First I wish to speak privately with these two gentlemen."

            And as though the years had not passed, as though they were never there at all, Severus and Remus found themselves sitting side by side in front of their old headmaster as he held a piece of paper that had the power to change their lives.


	2. The lark lands

            They sat in silence, the parchment holding them together like an invisible wire.  Finally, knowing Dumbledore was waiting for one of them to speak and knowing that Severus wouldn't be the one to break the silence, Remus spoke.

            "You think it's her, don't you?  Amadea?"

            "It is more important to know what each of you thinks," Dumbledore replied cryptically.

            Severus stared fixedly at the weakly pulsing orange light and shoved himself back in his seat as though to be farther away from it.  In truth, he was too afraid to hope it might actually be her.  He had shed his vulnerabilities long ago and had no wish to pick them back up.

            "I can't see how it would be anyone else," Remus admitted.  He spoke slowly, trying to process what it could mean, and especially what it could mean for him. 

            "If it is her—and I doubt it is," Severus said, his lip curled, "Then she's as clever as she ever was.  Not signing it is a good way to keep herself concealed, but whoever this message is from knows enough details to make us think of Dea—Amadea," he corrected himself.  

            "Precisely why I wished for both of you to see it," Dumbledore said, not missing the flash in Severus's eyes that indicated his annoyance at Remus's inclusion.  Like it or not, however, the werewolf had been bound to her when she healed him.

            But Severus didn't know that, and Albus wasn't about to add another link in the chain of envy.

            "I am sending you both into Hogsmeade to meet the sender of this letter," he said briskly.  "I have sent a reply telling the sender to be outside the Three Broomsticks tomorrow evening.  Remus, you will stay close to the building.  Severus, I wish for you to take a position nearby.  If a Death Eater approaches Remus, surely you will be able to give some sort of signal."

            "Surely," Severus said dryly, his stomach twisting into knots.  It wasn't his place to point out the risks to Albus.

            "I think I should meet with the rest of the Order now," Dumbledore said, standing.  "And if I'm lucky, perhaps there are more of those chocolate biscuits Molly brought."  He walked out of the room with a determined air, leaving the two men alone.  Though tension crowded them, memories clouded the air between them, words would not come, and the two sat in silence, one already believing and the other scared to believe.

~~~

            Remus ran a hand through his grey-streaked hair, trying not to shoot glances at the tall, black-clad man keeping watch across the street.  Severus looked as out of place as a Dementor at a tea party, but no one seemed to notice him standing there.  

            The time Dumbledore had indicated came and passed, leaving a tired werewolf and an irate professor wondering what was going on.  Finally, Remus stood and crossed to the shop where Snape stood and pretended to window-shop.  "She's not coming," he said under his breath, bending down to have a closer look at the broom on display.

            "She's dead, of course she's not coming," Snape said nastily, masking the disappointment he didn't want to feel.

            "We'll wait a few more minutes," Remus decided, turning to go back to his outdoor seat.  He sat back, barely resisting the urge to close his eyes, and saw a bird flit to the roof of the Three Broomsticks, its wings a bright orange in the evening sun.  Its wings were a chocolaty brown, and a single white feather streaked its left wing.  

            Raising an eyebrow and looking at Snape, Remus raised a finger toward the roof and mouthed "Lark."  But Snape was already looking at the bird, his eyes wide with something akin to fear.

            No sooner had Remus pointed the winged creature out than it had flown down and perched on the chair across from him, tilting its head and regarding him with dark eyes.  Lazily, he made as though to reach for his tea, then snatched his wand and pointed it at the bird.  Before it could fly, he had muttered an incantation forcing it to reveal itself.

            The bird hopped from the back of the chair onto the seat just as everything flashed, limbs sprouting and figure stretching.  

            A woman sat where the bird had landed, her dark hair sweeping straight past her shoulders, a single band of grey, almost white hair streaking down the left side.  Her dark eyes had aged immeasurably over the years, the defensive posture replaced by a strong one.  A thin line of pale scar tissue divided one of her eyebrows, but the full mouth was smiling in the same smile.

            "Well," she said brightly, raising her eyes to the sky.  "Don't you know better than to rush a girl's entrance?"  

            As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she promptly slumped face-first onto the table, unconscious.

            Remus's face lost all color and he glanced at his wand uncertainly.  Surely nothing he had done—

            Severus was already at the table, a pale, strong hand pressed to the side of her neck. 

            "I didn't—" Remus started to defend himself when Severus shook his head.

            "I know you didn't do anything.  She did it to herself."  And it had pained him into movement to see her stricken, to see her fall to the table with a weakness she'd brought on herself.  He'd thought her dead, and though she wasn't in the best shape, she was certainly alive.

            Almost twenty years, and she'd somehow been alive the entire time.  He couldn't help but feel a little angry.

            "She looked fine!" Remus insisted, leaning across the table and brushing the hair out of her face to better look at her.  

            Severus barely resisted the urge to shove Remus's hand away from her face, then stepped back himself.  "Because looks are often accurate indicators," he scoffed.  "She's not powerful enough to be an Animagus."  She never had been, he recalled.  He hissed sharply as the Dark Mark on his arm burned fiercely.  "Leave," he said through clenched teeth.  "Take her to the house."

            Remus watched as the former Death Eater grasped at his arm, then dug into his robe.  "Here," he said quickly, setting a bottle on the table.  "Give her that.  I have to go."  And with that, he Disapparated.

            Remus rubbed a hand down his face and cast a glance at Amadea.  She looked, he thought, surprisingly sound for a woman who had been dead for nearly twenty years.  "All right, then," he said wearily, crossing to stand at her side.  He lifted her head with one hand, using the other to slap her cheeks lightly.  "Up you go."  When she blinked owlishly, he uncorked the bottle Severus had left and trustingly tipped it to her lips.

            She withdrew immediately, her face screwed up.  "That tastes like bog water," she said, rubbing the back of her hand over her mouth.  Her eyes widened and she kept her hand where it was, covering her now agape mouth.  "Oh dear heavens," she said, standing and scrambling unsteadily back from the table.  "It's you!"

            "It can hardly be anyone else," Remus said, wondering how a woman back from the dead could be shocked at anyone or anything.

            "Ohh," she said, drawing it out like a soft sigh.  "Well, then, it seems you must have turned out on the side of good, after all."  She smiled then, her smile genuine rather than cheeky.  "Well done."  She hadn't been able to see him all that well in her Animagus form—bird eyesight, though often praised, left quite something to be desired.  

            "As fascinating as this is—" And it really was, he judged, "We cannot stay here, it is not safe."  Though he did not know precisely what or who he was looking for, Remus turned and surveyed the town around them.  

            "Not safe?  It's Hogsmeade, it can't have changed all that much."  The flat American accent was still there, stronger than ever, and it made him want to ask more questions.  Instead, he said the only thing he could think of that would get her moving—he told her the truth.

            "It's not safe because Severus said it wasn't safe."  And at the Potions teacher's name, her eyes widened and grew immediately darker as they flitted away from his own.  

            "Fine," she said quietly.  "Then we'll go."


	3. Catching up

            _Clear your mind, _he instructed himself, pushing away the anger, the hurt, and the unfamiliar happiness that Dea's return had stirred up within him.  With the ease of long practiced, the emotions and thoughts were banished, and his mind was perfectly clear as he stood in front of the Dark Lord.

            "Severus."  The name was drawn out thoughtfully, the voice chilling in the otherwise silent chamber in which he sat.  "It has been some time since I have heard from you.  I have been hoping for news."

            Severus kept his face composed in a cool mask, and when he spoke it was without the tremor he felt inside.  "There is little to tell, my Lord.  After the death of Black—" feeling the cold, gripping tentacles of Voldemort's mind probing his own Severus let his hatred of Sirius Black seep through the wall he had built, knowing it would be a satisfying find for Voldemort.  "They all felt it heavily.  It is a weakening blow, my Lord."  Though it was far from the truth, Severus spoke the words with confidence.  It was Voldemort himself who was weakened, forced to flee from his last confrontation by traveling through the body and mind of a mere boy.

            "Excellent."

            "Well, hello dear Sev."  A hand laid on Severus's shoulder with a disturbing weight, the long elegant fingers stroking over his wiry shoulder.  Lucious Malfoy stepped to Severus's side, leaving his hand on his shoulder so that his arm draped about him casually. 

            The man, Severus thought, was entirely too touchy.

            "Greetings, Lucius." Severus kept his face frozen in the deferential smile he often used in such occasions, but it was growing harder and harder to keep his mind clear and his emotions at bay.  Now he had much more to be angry for.  Knowing this silky bastard had helped take Dea's life had been bad enough.  Knowing that he'd stolen years from her, and more personally, from Severus, sickened him.

            And so he acted all the nicer.

~~~

            "It's been years since I've been here."  Her voice was awed as her eyes darted around the room.  "Since before Mum and Dad went to America."  Her heart seized at the thought of them.  She still hadn't been able to get their faces out of her mind, their slack, dead faces.  Now, standing in the Black domicile, more memories rushed to her, vague memories of the years her parents had tried to make it along in the wizarding world.  Only once had they visited the Black house, relatives so distant they didn't even make the family tapestry.

            Sirius, though very young, hadn't hesitated to tease about the inadequacy of her parents.  Feeling a weight on her chest, she took a deep breath and looked up at Remus, who was staring at her with frank curiosity in his eyes.

            "What if I said I didn't want to talk about it?" she asked cagily.

            "That's your prerogative, Amadea.  It's only that the walking dead are a bit of a curiosity."  He shrugged and walked into the kitchen, mechanically gathering the makings for tea.

            It was awkward.  How could it not be?  Before she'd disappeared, they'd been little more than acquaintances, bound together by an incident under the full moon.  

            "I heard about Lily and James."  She sat down at the kitchen table and felt a pang of guilt when she saw his shoulders first stiffen, then slump.  "And Sirius.  For what it's worth, I'm sorry." 

            "It was no fault of yours.  No need for you to be sorry."  He slammed the kettle onto the range a little harder than he'd intended to, his hands shaking a bit.

            "She—Lily—was the last person to talk to me before I went home."  Breaking off to concentrate, she levitated an empty teacup to sit in front of her, wrapping her hands around it so she'd have something to do with them.  

            Tapping his fingers against the counter, Remus waited for the kettle to come to a boil.  "I thought you didn't want to talk about it."

            "I don't," she retorted quickly, lifting her chin.  "But since I'm such a curiosity, I figured what the hell."  When he said nothing, she continued, brasher now.  "It wasn't Muggles.  I know what they told everyone, and it was a lie.  My parents' neighbors were the most harmless people on earth, so I don't guess it was they who played dress-up in their odd little masks and robes."  Sighing heavily, she turned the cup in her fingers.  "Can't you just microwave that?  Or…?"  She made a gesture with her wand.

            He was too caught up with the past to ask what a microwave was.  Instead he shook his head dismissively and sat down across from her.  "Masks like what?" he asked urgently, grasping her arm at the wrist.  "Miss Middlemarch, it's urgent."

            She raised her split eyebrow and yanked her wrist away from him.  "Masks like Death Eaters, I'd imagine," she said, annoyed with the sudden formality.  "I didn't spend the last 18 years sitting on my hands.  I've stayed underground, I've listened, and I've learned.  You want to know who killed my family?  Look for the people with the scary fuckin' tattoos on their arms."  The profanity slipped from her mouth unbidden, a throwback to the rebellious Muggle youths who had eventually been tamed and became her siblings.

            Remus thought of Snape, hand grasped to his arm to ward off the searing pain, and found he could not speak.

            The silence didn't bother Dea.  She'd spent most of the twenty years alone, silent but for the thoughts in her head, silent and listening to everything around her.  She'd spent the time before that silent, as well, listening to those who could neither see nor hear her.  But she'd started the story, and she would finish it.

            With a voice only slightly hushed in deference to the topic, Dea spoke of the bodies of her family, eyes wide, hands curled in defense just as they'd been struck down.  Her wand had been shaking from side to side, her trunk still floating in the air behind her with the remnants of Lily's spell.  

            Then the trunk had fallen, its magic lost by distance and time, directly onto the toe of the Death Eater behind her.  He had grunted, unable to stop himself, and Dea had whirled around, the wand still jerking, her face dead white.

            She'd said every incantation she could think of, forcing her hand to still and point the wand.  The drapes burst into flame, the lights flickered off and on, and for the first time since learning the spell, Dea was able to correctly levitate something and rotate it, and the wizard had flown into the air, spinning wildly.  He'd let loose a spell with an inaudible roar, slamming her with it and sending her straight into a wall.  

            And amidst the flames he'd fled, leaving her for dead as blood seeped down her face and into her eye, the smoke making it impossible to see or breathe or think.

            "Oddly enough, I guess it was Lily Evans who saved me."  Dea jerked as the kettle blew off steam and grinned sheepishly.  "Edgy," she said by way of explanation.

            "Yes," Remus said, turning his back to her and taking the pot off.  "Lily was appallingly good."

            "At magic?" 

            Remus looked over his shoulder at the witch and smiled with only one side of his mouth.  "No.  In general."

~~~

            He had welcomed her warmly, and she hadn't really expected any different.

            He'd been the only one who truly saw her without the aid of spells or coincidence or flukes.  Albus Dumbledore had been her touchstone for the two decades of underground, secretive existence, and she knew if she could reach him, he would know what to do.

            Now he stood regarding her with the same half-indulgent smile he'd had long ago, the eyes wise and assessing as she asked him the only question she wanted the answer to.  

            "Where is Severus?"  She hadn't wanted to ask about him, not so soon, but Remus had mentioned him, and it was as though a switch had been flipped.  Self-control switched off, she judged, disgusted with herself.  The adolescent girl was gone, and by all rights a woman should have taken her place. 

            But the cursed curiosity was still there, as strong as it had ever been, and she wanted to know where the one person was who had managed to see her, and in seeing her, hurt her.

            She saw Dumbledore and Remus exchange an uneasy look and her stomach turned over lazily.  "Well, spit it out," she demanded.  "I know he's not dead because you mentioned him earlier.  Where is he?"

            The door slammed behind her, making her jump, and the voice that sounded through the house, though familiar, was colder than anything she'd heard before.

            "He's right here."


	4. Mistakes past and present

            Dea turned, her dark orange robes swirling around her, and she took several steps forward, heedless of time, heedless of social protocol.  "Oh, God," she said shakily.  "Severus—"  Before he could do anything to ward off the woman, she had wrapped her arms around him, her orange robes mingling with his fathomless black ones.

            Remus turned away, unsure of where he was supposed to look.  The scene before him was none of his business and spoke of feelings too intimate to be shared with near strangers.  But he saw Dumbledore watching them with a peculiar intensity and so similarly watched from the corner of his eye.

            Dea stepped back, feeling the stiffness of the man she embraced and the lack of any sort of reciprocation.  _It wasn't as though you left on good terms, Dea, _she reminded herself, and her cheeks flushed a bright red.  "I beg your pardon," she said, but her voice was soft and near to breaking.  In a habit that had been barely formed before she had disappeared, she raised her hand to touch his face, and his hand shot up quickly, grasping her wrist.

            "I think it best you not touch me, Miss Middlemarch."  Severus forced the words from between his lips, still feeling the filth of Lord Voldemort clinging to his skin, still feeling the cold and reptilian hands of Lucius Malfoy.  He didn't want it touching her, he didn't want any of that side to touch this—

            _This filthy Mudblood? _ His father's voice, mingled with Lucius's, suggested in a snidely cheerful tone in his brain. _She's already stained, what harm is a little more muck?  _

            Clenching his teeth he cast his eyes down and away from her, his hair falling into his face as he struggled to control himself and the conflicting feelings within.  His fingers tightened marginally, making Dea cry out and jerk her wrist back.

            She could not free herself from his grasp, but his robes fell away from his forearm to reveal an angry series of welts, the remainders of the burning Dark Mark that had called him only hours ago.  Her breath left her in a high, whistling wheeze, and Severus looked up at her through the curtains of his dark hair.  Seeing her gaze fixed on his arm, he released her, sending her stumbling back.

            "Oh, God," she said, her voice choked as she scampered backwards from him, tripping over her own robes as she did so.  "Oh, God, not you, please not you."  When her robes hampered her so much that she was forced to simply sit on the floor, she curled her arms around her knees and buried her face, wanting to see anything but him, wanting to see anything but the stiff cold faces of her brother and sister.  

            "It is all right, Amadea, all things can be explained."  Dumbledore spoke softly, his gaze fixed on the woman sitting near his feet.  

            "Can they?" Severus asked nastily, feeling very much defensive.  

            "Stop it," Remus said sharply, looking at Severus.  

            "You helped them."  Her voice was muffled by her robes, but her words were clear enough.  "Did you know?"  She raised her head to fix two dry eyes on him, her face sickly pale.  "Did you know they'd killed my parents and tried to kill me?  That they'd left me in a burning house to die?"  She struggled to her feet then, shaking her head.  "Or how I had to do healing spell after healing spell on myself just to be able to walk out?"  Unconsciously, she rubbed a hand over the split in her eyebrow.  "Or maybe you told them about me, sent them after me."  

            He closed his eyes in a wince, disappointed that she could think such a thing, but more disappointed that he'd given her the opportunity to.

            Her eyebrows drew together and she shook her head.  "No.  I'm sorry, I don't believe that—I don't know what to believe right now."

            "I think you should come with me, Miss Middlemarch."  Dumbledore gave her his traditional look over the rims of his glasses and beckoned with one steady hand.  "We will go to Hogwarts where you will be able to sort things out.  You cannot stay here until the Order has convened and until I have told them about you."

            Remus stepped forward, ready to object, but then saw the drawn look on Severus's face.  It would do no good to increase his discomfort at such a time.  When Dumbledore, one steadying arm around Amadea, had gone, the house was completely silent, and the werewolf watched the Potions professor lower himself into a chair with the motions of a man much older.

            "You knew."  Remus's voice had lost some of its gentility, had gained a rare edge.  It was obvious Snape was hurting, but he was not surprised. 

            "Oh yes," he said smoothly, lacing his fingers together and resting his hands on his stomach.  He wanted to conjure fire, smash things, do anything to pour out the anger in him, the pure grief.  It had been hard to lose her the first time when she'd walked away, harder still when he'd thought her dead, and losing her a third time called up everything in him that had driven him to the Death Eaters in the first place.  

            _Now who's stained? _he wondered.

            "Yes," he continued, arching a pointed eyebrow at the werewolf.  "Absolutely, Lupin, I knew it all.  If you'd listen to her, I knew even before they did it."

            "Bollocks," Remus returned quickly.  "I don't believe that for a moment."  He circled the chair Severus sat in, then sat across from him.  They'd learned to tolerate each other, but only just barely.  Gratitude and duty held them together, Remus's gratitude for Severus's dutiful preparation of wolfsbane.

            "I knew," Severus repeated.  "I've known since the moment I came to the Order, since I went to Dumbledore, that they'd done this."  He stood, his robe flaring in a wide arc as he prowled the room like an underfed panther.  In a voice so low Remus barely caught it, he added, "What I didn't know was that they'd failed."

~~~

            She'd listened to the whole thing, and still it didn't fix everything.  No words and no wands could heal everything up quite that nicely, no matter how much sense either made.  

            "He joined them because of me," she stated flatly.  "And that's supposed to make me feel better?"

            "No," Dumbledore said, watching with approval as Fawkes perched on the arm of Dea's chair.  "It is only the truth.  Truth rarely ever makes us feel any better, Miss Middlemarch."

            "I think it's time for me to employ more of what you used to call American logic, and beg you to just tell me what I want to hear."  She rubbed at her temples, wanting nothing more than to shut herself in her room and have a good, long cry.

            Dumbledore's fist thumped on the large desk in front of him, making her jump.  When she looked at him, his eyes were fierce, sending a shiver down her spine.  "If you wish to help the Order, I will not suffer such weaknesses.  You must be true, Miss Middlemarch.  You must listen to the truth and bear it just as any other."  

            "Maybe I don't want to help!" she shot back, her eyes panicked.  "I'm just a Healer without training, Professor. I'm a Healer without training, and though I'm sure you already know this, in the Muggle world, that's a criminal offense."  The phoenix on her right shifted its weight from leg to leg beside her, and she put a hand on it as much to comfort herself as to comfort it.

"And I _am weak.  I won't be able to stand at your side if he also stands at your side.  At least not right now."  Things should have changed in two decades; she should have grown and other things should have lessened._

            His concern for her was no less than for any other student that had crossed into his life, but with war so soon approaching, Dumbledore's patience was wearing thin.  "Right now can only last a moment, Amadea.  If you wish to base things on personal feelings, let us think of it this way.  Lily Evans died saving her son, the boy who will eventually have to face down Voldemort himself."  He rubbed his forehead, wondering how it was possible he'd gotten so old, how things had come to this, how a student of his was now an adult with tired, adult eyes.  "He's no older than you were when you fell in love, Amadea, or when you died."

            A denial sprung to her lips and she let it die.  There was no use lying to a man who could reach into your mind without intrusion, a man who could look into your eyes and see truth shining from them or hiding behind them.

            "You've gotten better at the art of the guilt trip," she said, her voice sounding faraway.

            "I see no reason to let myself go," he rejoined.  

            "I want a few days to myself.  Just to get back into the swing of things."  To get used to the idea of her past and how it no longer applied.  

            Though he didn't understand her phraseology, Dumbledore nodded indulgently.  A few days could be given, he could speak with the Order.  And though Hogwarts was a big place, it wasn't possible to avoid someone if you weren't meant to.  


	5. Old habits

            So much could be revealed in such a short time.  It had taken Dumbledore a shockingly small amount of time to tell her everything, to tell her all that had happened after her parents and siblings had been murdered.  He'd taken full responsibility, saying that he'd trusted the American investigator too implicitly.  And though she knew Severus had been little more than a boy at the time, she couldn't stop the hurt that came from knowing he never looked for her. 

            It hurt even more to know that the mark on his arm was technically because of her.  If it hadn't been for her, he may have gone a different way, gone his own way.  But because of her, he'd turned to them, and the whole thing was almost too much to bear.

            She'd spent the majority of her missing nights hiding, going to magic-friendly places where people wouldn't know her, wouldn't care.  The white streak that had been shot through her hair with the Death Eater's spell tended to attract attention, but no more than a passing glance.  There were, after all, much stranger-looking witches and wizards who were on the lam, and so she blended in as well as she could.

            Most of those years had been spent in solitude, darting from location to location, gleaning as much information as she could.  But the girl had grown quickly into a woman, and comfort took precedence over propriety in the dark subways of New York and the crowded clubs of Miami.  She'd chosen big places because they hid her well, and now and again she'd chosen men like her, runaways who desperately needed some connection, any connection to keep them going.  There had been friends, there had been lovers, but there had never been any loves.

            Those, she had determined upon walking bloody, scarred, and burnt out of her parents house, were a thing of the past. 

            She felt sixteen all over again, uncertain, confused, and most of all, helpless.  Though being inside Hogwarts walls made her feel safer, it also made her feel smaller, younger.  More vulnerable.  There was also anger thrown into the mix and a need for avengement, no matter how she could get it.  And the elephant in the room was a bundle of feelings so misplaced she couldn't categorize them.  Those were the feelings that made her fall asleep at night and dream of the past, of a misused boy in black and a prowling wolf.  

            Because she had no room for those dreams, no room for those feelings, and because Dea could no longer abide the cloistered teachers' quarters she'd been lodged in, she tucked her wand into her sleeve and snuck out as she had so many years before.

~~~

            She was foolish for wandering the grounds at night, but he wasn't going to be the one to point it out to her.  Turning away from his spot at one of the myriad windows of Hogwarts, Severus headed down toward the dungeons, where there would be no windows, no distracting views of what passed outside.  

            _Hate me if you must, _he thought, slamming into his workroom with his jaw set.  _As long as you stay away from me.  _

            He'd driven her away as a teenager, knowing instinctively that he must strike before stricken, and then again when she had confessed her heritage to him.  It hadn't bothered him so much that her family all pretended to be Muggles—it bothered him that she'd not told him until the one moment when she knew it would most shake him.

            To calm himself, he began mixing the one thing he consistently used—or rather, gave away.  Slow hands exhibiting a patience few saw, Severus mixed wolfsbane potion for the man who was not only a man, the one who was not his friend but was not his enemy.  

            It was easy, he thought when he was done with the potion, too easy to push away the memories of those things that had been wrong before she left.  The invisible girl with her invisible world, her family that no one remembered for more than seconds, the pretty, smiling face which no one could look at directly.  She had done what he had wished to do, and perhaps she had been happier for it. 

            But she had not been his, and he had been determined that she would not be.  And in the moments when he was weakest, she had given him the ultimate reason that she could not be his.  Everything he came from abhorred everything she came from, and so a part of him too elemental to name still recoiled from a beautiful woman with scars both inside and out.

            _I could heal that, you know.  _Her voice, youthful and sad, floated through his mind and he grimaced as he remembered her pointing at his heart.  

            She had been wrong about that.  It was impossible to heal what had long since died. 

~~~

            It was just as strange to see Hogwarts without students as it would have been to see New York without lights or Florida without beaches.  The windows of the castle were, for the most part, lightless, and the grounds quiet despite the fact that dusk was only beginning to set.  

            "Old habits die hard."  The voice, though quiet, made her jump, and her wand was aimed before she turned.  Remus Lupin stood behind her, hands raised in a gesture of surrender.  "I came to see if everything was all right.  I feel I should have warned you about… some things."  What were the words for such things, he wondered, that were too important to actually talk about?

            "It actually wasn't any of your business."  She'd meant it to lighten his burden, but the snapped reply escaped her before she could stop it.  His expression stayed placid, however, and he regarded her with a maddening amount of patience.  "I'm fine," she said.  "I just need time to adjust.  Time to myself."  But it wasn't so unpleasant, having him walk with her.  The poet's face of long ago had ripened into a somehow beautifully melancholy face, the concave cheeks leading to large, haunted eyes the color of mossy birch bark.  He had grown up, Dea noted, and had survived that which his friends hadn't.  She felt a pang of guilt at her dismissal and stayed in step with him despite her words.

            "This isn't the place to have time to yourself, Amadea," he stated.  "If you wanted that, you could have stayed gone.  I hear being dead is an excellent way to garner quiet time."  His lips quirked as he saw her shocked glance.

            "Bite your tongue," she reprimanded, but Dea felt the light laughter that wanted to come and so indulged it.  It had been too long without a laugh, she judged, and nothing else that had happened in the full day had made her feel humorous in the least.  "I guess I thought you were staying at the Black house."

            Remus bowed his head by way of a nod, his grey-streaked hair falling into his eyes.  "Usually, yes, but there's something I need from Professor—"  He cut himself off, uncertain of whether or not she knew Severus's status at the school.  "Something I need from one of the professors," he amended.  Though he was sure Snape had bigger things on his mind than turning Remus into nothing more than a lovable pooch, Remus wasn't eager to wait until the last minute.

            "Ah.  You could tell me but then you'd have to kill me."  Dea nodded gravely, amused at the confusion written on his features.  Perhaps she should have stayed in America.

            "You'll have to meet with the Order soon," he told her as they approached the large doors of the castle.  "Now that you know where headquarters are, and what some of the inner workings are."

            "I'm ready," she said, surprising herself.  "Maybe you're right.  I've had all the time alone I can handle."  

            Far above them, from one of the many unlit windows of the castle, a single figure watched them pass.


	6. People and their opinions

            Dea supposed it was her fault for telling Dumbledore she needed a few days.  The man was nothing if not unfailingly generous, and so a week later she found herself still waiting for him to meet with the Order and announce her request to join.  

            Really, she also supposed she deserved it.

            It was a joy, however, to wander the hallways of the school, to see how things had changed, and more remarkably, how some things had stayed absolutely the same.  Some paintings called out to her, recognizing her immediately and seeming not in the least perturbed that she was alive.  Only The Grey Lady had mentioned her demise… or lack thereof, floating along beside her and asking wavering, quiet questions about her undeath.

            She saw some of the professors now and again, men and women who had taught her in her days at Hogwarts and who did not seem the least bit surprised to see her.  McGonagall had passed her several times, nodding politely each time, as had Professors Flitwick and Binns.  She eventually found herself standing before the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom door, her head tilted thoughtfully.  The classroom was nearly starkly empty, no materials, no things left behind by a teacher preparing for classes in the fall.  

            She was on her tiptoes trying to peer into the small window of the door when she heard movement behind her.  Without turning, she stepped away from the window and spoke.  "I always thought it would be you," she said, "Who would end up teaching this class."

            It was his quiet that gave him away, the smooth silence of his approach and the feel of two black eyes boring into her back.  

            She turned even as he spoke, her hands clenched inside the voluminous sleeves of her robes, her eyes unreadable and her mouth pinched.

            Severus's own expression wasn't far different, his chin held high and his eyes coolly assessing.  "Well, I'm afraid that's one thing you were wrong about.  I have not yet garnered, nor am I likely to ever garner, the privilege of teaching Dark Arts."

            "Defense," she corrected him quietly, brushing past him.  "Defense Against the Dark Arts.  Unless they've changed the curriculum since I was away."

            "No," he said, crossing his arms over his chest and watching her.  "That is one thing that has not changed.  However, I note you've gotten much better at running away."  The urge to hurt was nearly insatiable, to defend himself.  She couldn't even stand to look at him directly, and it ached inside him like something rotted. 

            She turned then, her eyes narrowed in thought.  "And I note you've grown less hesitant to hurt the few people who actually care about you," she said, shaking her head.  "We clearly aren't the same people."

            "We were never the people you thought we were, in any case."  Looking closely, he saw the small wrinkles around her eyes, around her mouth, the lines that showed years of smiles, and it bewildered him.  What had she to smile about for all those years, when she could not seem to smile now?  

            And who had been making her smile?

            "Perhaps we weren't," Dea said, her heart moved by pity.  She'd hoped with each stolen breath she took while she was gone that he'd have found someone, something to heal the rend she hadn't the talent to fix.  "But we both did a damned fine job of pretending."

            "Some of us pretend better than others," he retorted.  "I've never been one to stand on pretense."

            The tension that had been mounting since the moment she'd seen him in the Black house came to a head, and Dea laughed loudly, bitterness mixed with genuine amusement at the idiotic predicament she'd somehow ended up in.  "Really, Severus?  Was that why you pretended to care about me?"  And seeing that he had no response to that, she arched her scarred eyebrow and went on her way.

            "I wasn't pretending," Severus finally said, but he couldn't raise his voice to make himself heard.

~~~

            How many tears could be cried for one person?  And how many tears could one person cry? 

            She'd lost count some years ago, and she wasn't sure there was actually an end to the tears, only brief respites.  

            The small room had become a fortress rather than a prison, and Dea knew as long as she stayed precisely where she was, she was likely to be better off.  She'd only just made the decision to barricade herself in for as long as it took when an owl flitted to her windowsill, hooting happily and flapping his wings in the mellow sunshine.

            "Hello, darling," Dea said, standing to approach the messenger.  As she untied the message from its leg, it stroked its head along her cheek, wiping away tears with soft feathers. 

            For a fleeting moment, Dea longed to transform into the bird she'd made herself long ago, to fly away and just never come back.  But she'd given her word to Dumbledore, and her skills as an Animagus were self-taught and very crude.  There hadn't been a single transformation that hadn't ended with her out cold somewhere.  

            So, with a sigh, she unrolled the message she'd released from the owl.

            _Official Order Summons.  You will be escorted to Headquarters in precisely one hour to convene with the members of the Order.  There is no need to reply to this summons, your presence will be expected._

            There was no signature, only a small phoenix sketched quickly at the bottom.  

            "Dress casual, bring your own bottle," she murmured, tearing up the message and gesturing for the owl to go on its way.  

            Her time of waiting was over.

~~~

            The man was creepy. 

            It was bad enough that he seemed to know and revel in his particular brand of madness, but then there was that damnable eye of his, constantly spinning and occasionally making noises that reminded a very ill Dea of a slot machine's wheels rolling to a stop.

            They set out from Hogwarts walking at a pace so quick Dea had to run to keep up with the long-limbed Auror.  Occasionally he would mutter something and the scenery would change, and they would be walking somewhere completely different.  Other times he would take them in circles and backtracks so intricate she could barely follow what they'd done.  When they finally reached Grimmauld Place, she felt as though she'd walked for hours—and it was likely she actually had.  But the sun was only just setting, and the day had not yet grown chilly.

            "Here y'are," he said, tugging her roughly up the steps with one last eyespin to check for people following.

            The noise in the house was near to deafening.  A crowd of fifteen to twenty people had crammed into the drawing room of the house, each of them debating something different.  Worst of all was the portrait on the wall, the hated old woman that Dea could barely remember screeching at the top of her longs.

            Her sedateness had worn off only days before, the shock of her son's death apparently having worn off, and she yelled at the gathered crowd with the fervor of a sidewalk preacher.  

            "You!  Each and every one of you!  Traitorous, murderous, filthy fiends, every last one of you!  It is you who killed my son!  May his death be on your head!"

            The woman's voice was drilling awl-like into Dea's head and she jerked away from Mad-Eye to face the painting.  "Hello, Mrs. Black," she said in a drawl completely unlike her usual tone.  This woman—this horrible, long-dead woman was everything that had sent Dea to hide, everything that had driven her to invisibility and silent tears over her parents' predicament.  This woman was Wizarding snobbery in its nastiest, most virulent form, and Dea had had it up to her ears with the snobbery that had spawned battles and senseless deaths, snobbery that had spawned the rejection of love and too many tears to count.  

            The drawn-faced woman gasped and visibly recoiled in her painting, shocked eyes fixed on Amadea.  "You!  Muggle-posing filth!  Muggle-posing filth come to meet with the son-killers!"

            "You hadn't a son, Mrs. Black," Dea reminded her coldly.  "And that was a choice all your own."  She'd seen the tapestry on the wall, the cruel patterns of burn marks that spoke of disowning and heartlessness.  "But should you like to know who killed the last of the Black line, how about you ask some of the more beloved members of your family, hmm?"  

            Sirius's mother seemed to have no appropriate response to that, as she screwed up her face and began yelling precisely as she had before.

            Impatient, Dea jerked together the drapes covering the painting and raised her wand.  "_Consuo velum proprius," _she commanded, nodding as the two sides of the drapes sewed themselves up neatly.  She stood with her arms over her chest and waited for a moment until she was satisfied that the drapes had closed themselves for good.  Mrs. Black could be heard uttering muffled shrieks, but little else.

            The sudden silence behind her forced Dea to turn around, suddenly feeling very small and very inspected.  "Hey," she said, looking wide-eyed at the group around her.  She saw a group of several redheads that all looked alike standing together, mouths hanging open, Lupin standing toward the back, Severus sitting in a chair in the corner, arms crossed over his chest.  Dumbledore stood in the very center of the room, flanked by McGonagall and a particularly spectacular-looking black man.  The people were crowded into the middling-sized room, and every one of them, excepting Severus, was watching her.

            "Hey yourself," spoke a young woman standing off to the side, her blood-red hair twisted in corkscrews around a heart-shaped face.  "Wicked hair," she added.  Even as Dea watched the woman, a white streak threaded its way down the right side of the corkscrews.  Drawing her eyes to their extreme corners to see the results of her subtle transformation, the young woman nodded approvingly before jerking her attention back to Dea.  "Well, you shut up dear Auntie there, so I say three cheers and welcome to the Order."


	7. Meetings

            "I can always depend on Nymphadora to sum things up in a concise manner," Dumbledore said, smiling at the woman who had spoken.

            "Tonks," she corrected stubbornly.  

            The sole female among the group of look-alike redheads rushed forward, her flyaway hair bobbing around a round, kind face.  She grabbed Dea's hand before Dea could even move and pressed it between her own.  "Well, look at you," she said, her eyes wide.  "And here we thought you were gone.  I'm so sorry about your mother—my Mum and she were dear friends when they were tots, you know."  Her eyes bounced around the room and she straightened with a bit of a "harrumph."  "Didn't anyone make some proper tea for the woman?  Merlin!"  And with that, she swept into the kitchen.

            "So what's she got that we can't do without?"  A tired-looking man holding what looked to be a very filthy pipe spoke distinctly, patting a hand to his belly.  He eyed her speculatively.  "We hear you're only a middling witch, with middling powers.  Big brains, little wand," he snorted.

            "It's the healing."  Remus stepped forward, speaking after a long moment of very uncomfortable silence.  He shot Severus an annoyed look, then gave one to Dumbledore.  Was no one going to speak up for her?  "It's as she did with the drapes there.  She has only to say the words, not even a particular spell or incantation, and the deed is done."  So saying, he brushed a finger over the side of his nose, smiling at her encouragingly.  

            "So you're a Healer?"  The question came from one of the three remaining redheads, a man a bit younger than her with a shaggy head of strawberry-blonde hair and arms the size of tree trunks.

            "No."  It was Severus who spoke, finally regarding her with an air of objectivity that made her want to squirm.  "She hasn't the training of a Healer."

            "An unlicensed Healer… I always said this place needed a few more rebels."  Another redhead piped up, slipping a hand through an incredible mane of shoulder-length red hair and revealing an earring.  He grinned at her roguishly and got an elbow in the ribs from a man who Dea assumed was his father.

            "It's like Harry with his broom," the strawberry blonde said.  "Just a natural."

            "Yes, because everything must always relate back to Potter," Severus rejoined, rolling his eyes.

            "You're a right prig, you know that, Snape?"  The strawberry blonde leaned forward threateningly, only to be elbowed by both father and brother.

            "Stop!"  Dumbledore's voice cut through the chatter that was starting to rise again and looked at Dea.  "Amadea sent us her plea, it is for her to tell us why she did so."  He inclined his 1head toward her, making her nervous indeed.

            "Ah…"  For a moment she was afraid she'd be completely speechless, but then she looked once more at Remus, who nodded for her to go on.  "I've been everywhere in the last twenty years.  I've heard things, I've seen things that none of you have been able to see or hear.  And Remus is right, the healing is what I have to offer you.  It's my understanding that we're in a battle."  She locked eyes with Dumbledore then.  "And in a battle, soldiers are inevitably wounded.  So I can help you in that manner.  It also doesn't hurt that the Ministry doesn't know I'm alive, and neither do the Death Eaters."

            "Well, some of the Ministry knows now," Tonks said apologetically, shrugging and then jerking her thumb at a redheaded man Dea's age and the man who looked like a giant black pirate.  

            "And one Death Eater knows now," Severus couldn't help adding.  

            _Are you so determined to cut me with your words? _Dea wondered, keeping her eyes away from his.

            "I'm still not sure about this."  The man with the pipe furrowed his brow a bit and looked at her through watery eyes.

            "You had better become sure, Fletcher."  The black man spoke, his voice cutting smoothly through the tension.  "She was right.  She can help."  

            "Then it's settled."  Dumbledore looked around at the other members of the Order who had not spoken and saw nods from nearly all of them.  Turning back to her, he spread his hands wide.  "Well, then.  You are, of course, welcome to stay here if you'd like.  I will have your things sent over from Hogwarts."

            Dea smiled but her eyes were hard as she looked at Severus.  His were not the only words that could cut.  "That's quite all right, Professor.  I left nothing of mine at Hogwarts."

~~~

            He would have preferred to leave but knew there was no way to do so without being painfully obvious.  It _was _supposed to be a meeting, after all, even if all that was going on was more socializing.  He watched with hardened eyes as members of the Order introduced themselves to her, some ingratiating, others curious, and a slight few disapproving.  

            And of course Weasley had to drag his half-brood to her, introducing each of the two sons as though they were something more than… well, than Weasleys.  

            "Hallo, then!  Hi!  I'm Arthur Weasley, and my wife Molly's making the tea in there, should be done any second."  He pumped her hand enthusiastically and pointed at Bill and Charlie in turn, introducing them.

            Dea smiled politely and found her hand being shaken less enthusiastically, albeit more firmly, by each of the two young men.  

            "You and I related, you know," Arthur confided.  "Distant, but still there."

            Across the room, Severus's mouth tightened into a line so thin as to disappear entirely.  He supposed it should have been one more reason to be grateful for the way things were, but… 

            But he longed to have that ease with her that everyone else had, the ease of just meeting, the ease of no history.  And everyone had that ease with her except for him.  And, he amended, Lupin.  The last thing Severus wanted was for her to be alone in the malignant hulk of a house with the werewolf, but he had no say in the matter. 

            _And why should I care?  _Severus prodded himself.  He shouldn't, of course, but it didn't change things.

            It didn't change the history.  

            Suddenly not caring for rules or protocol, rudeness or propriety, Severus stood from his chair and departed from the house.  She might have nothing left at Hogwarts, but the school was all he had.

~~~

            By the time everyone had departed, night had fallen.  Good-byes were terse from some, and drawn out from others.  The Weasleys had been the last out the door, Molly Weasley particularly hard to shoo out, promising with each breath that she'd be back to check up on things.  Arthur had asked endless questions about Muggle life and passing as a Muggle, and the two sons had wanted to know everything about American women.

            As the door had shut behind the last of them, with a notably missing Severus, Dea turned to face Dumbledore.  "It's not always like this," she stated quietly, meaning it as a question but unable to phrase it as such.

            "No, it is not," he agreed.  "But we have just lost one of our best, and recruiting someone of quality is a morale booster for them."  With a wave of his wand, he unconjured the extra chairs back to their original locations.  "The boy, Harry, will be coming soon."  He raised his eyes as though searching the sky, though they were under a solid ceiling.  "The battle is nigh, Dea.  I thank you for your contribution."

            "Don't thank me just yet," she said weakly.  

            He smiled kindly, then Disapparated with a pop, leaving Dea very much alone, and wondering how she had come to be so.

            The quiet of the house pressed upon her, the weight of the evening pouring onto her shoulders with it, and she felt her entire body droop.  She considered calling out for Remus, trying to determine where in the large house he had disappeared to, but her lips wouldn't form his name.  Her independence wouldn't lean.

            Sighing, she trudged up the stairs, withdrew her wand and chanted quietly.  "Light for me, light from thee, show me which rooms empty be."  Several doors glowed a sedate orange and she slipped into one of them, curling up onto the bed fully robed.  She'd slept in many a place worse than this, and so it took her only instants to fall asleep from the exhaustion of the night.

            And when a wolf crept through the partially open door to lie down at the foot of her bed, she never stirred.


	8. Efforts made

            Dea woke slowly the next morning, trying to determine her location without opening her eyes.  It had become a game for her many years before, when every night had been spent in a different place.  

            The Black house.  With a slight sneer, Dea recalled Sirius's mother's portrait, screeching loudly enough to be heard in outer space.  "Crazy old bat," she muttered, climbing out of bed stiffly and prowling off in search of a bathroom.  By the time she had found one and was done with her day's grooming, she desperately hoped Remus was around.  She had things she needed to vent about.

            When she found him in the kitchen reading the newspaper and drinking a cup of tea, she sat down and immediately began to speak.  "Maybe I missed something in the years I was gone, but when did it become fashionable or tasteful to hang house elf heads on the walls?  And do we have any coffee?"

            Remus looked up from his paper, blinking a few times as though to catch himself up with her small speech, which had all been said rapid-fire and in a single breath.  Finally, wrinkling his nose at her choice of beverage, he conjured a steaming cup of coffee for her.  "The house elf heads were… a bit of a tradition in the Black household.  We've so far been as unable to get them off the walls as we were the wonderfully conversational portrait of Sirius's mum."  He took another sip of his tea and watched as she plopped several lumps of sugar into her coffee.  "It's too bad Kreacher's head isn't up there," he added.  It should have been strange to have her sitting across from him, hair still wet from the shower she'd taken, talking comfortably.  But it wasn't, and for that he was grateful.

            She'd slept fitfully the night before, calling out for her parents in her sleep, and at least once calling out for Severus.  

            "Kreacher?" she asked, bringing him back to the present moment.  

            "Yes, the last house-elf.  Traitorous mite.  Not really sure what happened with him, you know.  After Snape questioned him, it was sort of…"  He trailed off and shrugged.

            "Ah."  Dea didn't know what to say, and so took a sip of the sweet and scalding coffee in front of her.  Drumming her fingers on the table, she studied Remus through her lashes.  He was a bit too thin, his robes in bad need of mending—or perhaps, she thought, he was just in need of new robes.  It didn't look as though they could take another mending.  Afraid she would embarrass him but willing to risk it, she eyed him across the table.  "Would you let me fix your robes?" 

            He colored then, if only a little, the paleness of his cheeks pinking up a bit; he grinned sheepishly.  "That bad, eh?"  He strove to keep the embarrassment out of his voice; after all, it was hardly his fault people were too ignorant to hire a werewolf for… well, much of anything.  Besides, with his duties to the Order, he had no room for a job.  If and when he survived the final showdown with Voldemort and his followers, he'd worry about a job.  But for now, he'd not bite the hand that tried to feed him.  

            "Well, I am going away for a bit, on what you might call a diplomatic mission."  He'd been unofficially assigned ambassador to what purists called "half-breeds"— Anything and everything that didn't fall neatly into the category of human or non-human.  "I don't suppose it could hurt to look my best."  Self-consciously, he ran a hand through his graying hair.  "Though I am afraid even my best is a bit lacking."

            Dea had to work hard not to gape at him.  Lacking, right.  With his fine-boned face, big unusual eyes, and wiry body, Remus Lupin would have fit right in with the Romantic poets whose pictures were still making college girls sigh.  "Whatever," she said a bit too quickly.  "Then let's have a go."

            "Do I need to take my robes off for this?"  His face colored again and he set his tea down with a sharp smack of porcelain on wood.  "You know, ah… to have them fixed."

            Though the unintentional innuendo was not lost on Dea, she was already focused on the robes.  "No," she said off-handedly.  "Leave them on, but stand up."  And before he could ask any further questions, she began pointing the bright orange wand and muttering quietly.  She stood to walk in a circle around him and he could feel the material growing heavier on his frame.

            Finally, she stood in front of him, arms crossed and eyes clouded.  Then the clouds cleared and she smiled.  "Done."  She laid her hand on the chair she'd vacated, wrapping her fingers around one of the rungs so tightly her knuckles turned white.

            Expecting nothing more than a simple mending, Remus looked down and his eyes widened.  What had been a threadbare, fading black robe was now a thick and heavy ebony vestment, the sleeves neatly hemmed and the collar dipped to show a bit of the open-throated white shirt he wore beneath.

            "Well," he said quietly.  "I must say that's a sight better than the mending I do."  He raised his eyes to her and, seeing her pallor, cursed.  She was hanging onto the chair like a first-year grasping a wand and her eyes were half-shut.  "Damn it," he said, taking a step forward and, pressing his hand to her shoulder, forcing her down into the chair.  "More than just mending, eh?"

            "It's fine," she insisted, closing her eyes and letting the wave of dizziness pass over her.  It _had _been more than mending; it was more like creating altogether.  She was weakened by her travel to England, but it was more than that.  She was weak because her mind was on other matters, weak because she had been only a half-moment away from crying for weeks.  "I'm just out of practice is all."  Shaking her head as though to clear it, she looked up at him and nodded approvingly.  "I did a damned good job."

            "And you're even modest," he said dryly, backing away from her though he was still concerned.  She wasn't well, and hadn't been for some time.  "Amadea, the magic… it should be effortless, you know."

            "Well, it's not!" she said, her voice rising to a shout as she thumped her fist on the table.  "Some of it is, but not all of it.  Not even nearly most of it!"  Shaking her head, she stood.  When he started toward her, she flung a hand out to stop him.  "I'm fine!"  But she could feel his eyes boring into her back as she walked out of the kitchen.

~~~

            Remus left the next day, informing Dea matter-of-factly that he had people and other creatures to see, to entreat in the cause.  "I think it's best you stay here," he said in an apologetic tone.  "It's best if your existence is known by as few as possible."

            "I understand."  Guilt stole her words, made her quiet and questionless as he prepared to leave.  

            "You can go to Hogwarts if you wish, just owl Albus."  He slung a pack over his shoulder and looked at her steadily.  He hadn't meant to hurt her feelings the previous day, but the simple fact was she needed to be careful.  He knew he wasn't the only one who wouldn't like to see her hurt. 

            "I don't want to go back there," she said stiffly, casting her dark eyes away from his.  Risk another confrontation with Severus?  Not likely.  Sighing, she forced herself to meet his gaze once again.  "I'm sorry, Remus," she finally said, running a hand through her hair. 

            "You are too hard on yourself, Amadea.  That, at least, has not changed."  So saying, he stepped by her, turning back to look at her speculatively.  "Keep an eye on Buckbeak, will you?  He's enough food to last, but he likes a bit of company."  And with that, he was out the door, walking into a street from what would have appeared to be thin air to a bystander.

            Alone again, Dea decided her best course of action was to explore the big, old house.  She'd go mad if she had nothing to do, and she figured there were plenty of things in the house that could use simple healing spells.  She walked around the house, fixing broken or bent boards, patching wallpaper that was sagging or torn, brightening up fixtures that seemed to have had a permanent layer of tarnish on them.  

            When she came to a hallway of bedrooms, she merely opened the doors and peeked in, a little spooked by the idea of so many rooms in a house with only one person.  But when shoving open a door revealed a room full of things that were obviously Remus's, she couldn't stop the curiosity that Dumbledore had commented on so many years ago.  Pulling her lip between her teeth and feeling only marginally guilty, she crept into the room.

            A few cages stood here and there, large-eyed creatures huddled into the back corners of them, hissing or chattering.  A small, roughly-hewn wolf sat on top of a bureau, a once gaily-colored tag hung around his neck.  She turned it in her fingers, a fond smile playing about her lips as she read the faded handwriting.  _To Moony, the wildest of the Marauders.  Love, James and Lily._

She dropped the tag as though burned, feeling as though she was intruding upon something more personal than she'd intended.  She turned to go, then saw the bottles. 

            Countless bottles stood on a small bedside table, some empty, some corked and filling the empty space at the top of the bottle with a curiously thick-looking steam.  She bent down to look at the labels and felt her heart twist a little at the familiar, fine-handed, spidery handwriting.  

            _For RL only!  Wolfsbane Potion.  Take one (1) dose before each full moon.  Results will last for duration of said moon.  SS._

            Potions, she recalled, had always been a strong suit of his. 

            The sound of the downstairs door slamming had her wheeling out of the room, shutting the door behind her with as much stealth as she could manage.  She was at the head of the stairs when she was stopped by the sight of two identical redheads at the foot of the stairs.

            "Found her, mum," one called out cheerfully, waving a hand.  

            "Wicked robes.  Very garish," the other said, flashing her a thumbs-up.

            "We sell robes at our place—" 

            "But they all change color or dissolve into nothing at a set time—"

            "Which is really quite funny for those wizards who go bareback under their robes."

            The exchange between the two was more than a little confusing, and Dea had barely registered what they'd said before they both grimaced, clapping hands to their ears and howling in pain.

            "How many times, eh?  How many times will I have to tell you two to have some manners?  And you're adults now!  It's appalling!"  Molly Weasley came around the corner, pointing her wand at the twins and apparently twisting their ears.  "Hello, Dea," she said warmly, the snappish tone gone.  "We came by to call.  That, and to give you a bit of an advance warning.  Things always seem to… cycle down after a confrontation, but as they will, they cycle back up again.  So this place will become quite busy."

            "Grand Central," Dea said, smiling.  The puzzlement on Molly's face simply made her sigh.

            "These are two more of my sons… the ones we normally hide."  Magically, Molly shunted them both forward with a speed Dea had to admire.  "George."  One twin bowed theatrically, "And Fred."  The other tipped an imaginary hat.

            "Would you like a sweet?" Fred asked in a facetiously innocent voice.

            "No, thanks," Dea said, starting back down the stairs.  Even if Molly hadn't introduced them, it would have been obvious who they were.  They were merely slightly smaller versions of their brother Charlie, with redder hair and definitely wickeder eyes.  "Didn't anyone ever tell you not to take candy from strangers."

            George looked at his mother.  "You're right, Mum, she is smart."

            When she reached the bottom of the stairs, she nearly stumbled.  Another redhead sat close in conversation with a curly-haired girl who was already a head-turner, and a raven-haired boy who looked up at the sound of her approach.

            "Oh, dear God," Dea said, her heart in her mouth.  "James."


	9. Curiosity

            His eyes were green.

            It was that fact and that fact alone that made her release the breath she'd held, letting out in a relieved rush so fierce it made her light-headed.  For a moment it had been like seeing a ghost, and she knew how it must have been for everyone to see her alive.  But it wasn't a ghost, merely Harry Potter—the one whose name had reached her even overseas, underground.  

            The one who was James's and Lily's last mark upon the world. 

            "My apologies," she said quietly, meaning not only for the misunderstanding, but also for the loss.

            Harry seemed to intuit her meaning, a small, prematurely understanding smile flitting across his features.  "Thanks," he said, his eyes traveling over her robes, his curiosity barely concealed.  "You must be Dea," he said matter-of-factly.  

            "On most days," she said agreeably, a smile lifting one side of her lips.  Children, she thought, the children of her peers.  If things had been different she could have had children that age—shoving the thought away with a visible shake of her head, she smiled politely as the curly-haired brunette looked up at her, who in turn elbowed the redhead to make him stop talking.

            "I'm Harry," James's son said unnecessarily.  "This is Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley."

            "Fred!  If I find another Dungbomb in my trunk, I'm going to skin you!  You've seen how Mum peels potatoes with her wand?  That's you!"  The voice, pretty but strident, came bouncing from the kitchen insistently.

            "My sis, Ginny," Ron said, sounding apologetic.  "She's a bit like Mum, you know."

            _Six children? _Dea thought dazedly; she belatedly remembered that Arthur had mentioned something about a son who worked at the ministry, however.  _Seven kids, good heavens!  _It seemed the Weasleys had more than made up for their childless comrades.

            "Mr. Weasley said you lived with Muggles," Hermione said forthrightly.  "I can't tell you what a relief that is."

            "A relief?" Dea tilted her head curiously, looking at the unflinching girl.

            "Well, yes.  It's a little tiring to refer to things that no one else has any knowledge of.  Just yesterday I told Ron he was getting tall enough to play basketball and he looked at me as though I'd gone mad."

            "You have gone mad," Ron muttered, but Dea caught the admiring look he sent Hermione out of the corner of his eye.  

            Just then, a willow-slim redhead, undoubtedly Ginny, dashed out of the kitchen and past Dea, nearly knocking her over.  "Sorry 'bout that," she said, skidding to a halt and dropping a quick curtsy.  "Be back in a moment."

            "I'd appreciate it if you wouldn't do that."  The deep voice came just as the front door was flung open, disapproving and stern.  Kingsley Shacklebolt stepped in, trying very hard to ignore the person behind him.

            "Oh, come on.  Have a laugh, King."  It was Tonks's voice, but it was coming from what seemed to be a small, female version of the tall, black Auror.  She looked exactly like him, except without the sheer size and rough-hewn features.  Even as she stuck her tongue out at the original Kingsley, Tonks morphed back into her usual face, pale and heart-shaped, her hair settling into a sleek Marilyn Monroe-like do.

            The commotion that was beginning to rise in the house was double-edged for Dea.  It was relieving in that the sheer intensity of it would relieve her boredom and take her mind off of things best left alone.  But it also made her nervous, because when the Order gathered, it also seemed to mean confrontation with her past.

            "Were you really Professor Snape's girlfriend?  I sort of heard you were."  Hermione, whom Dea had decided was only a hair too old to be called precocious, asked shamelessly, blinking up at Dea with guileless brown eyes.

            "Oh, gag me with a pestle!" Ron said loudly, rolling his eyes back in his head.

            "Do grow up, Ron," Hermione retorted coldly, not even bothering to look back at where he was gasping and throwing himself to the floor.  At her words, he instantly sobered and looked more sheepish than he would have if his own mother had harangued him. 

            What a question, Dea judged, rubbing her eyes and thinking of everything that had transpired.  What a silly word, girlfriend, silly and antiquated and juvenile.

            What a silly word that she hadn't been able to experience.

            "Not really, Hermione."  Unable to keep the sadness from her voice, she shrugged.  "We were only friends, once upon a time."

            "The only friends that cranky git has are his potions and his Slytherin-green mortar and pestle."  Ron looked thoughtful at this and narrowed his eyes.  "Saaaay… you think they have those in red?"

            But Dea was no longer listening, remembering a Christmas present to a presentless boy, a little love shown to one unloved, a little reminder apparently kept over two decades.  How could something remain the same when everything else had moved on?

            "No," she said absently, glancing down at Ron.  "They didn't have them in red.  Or at least they didn't have them when I bought it."  She shook her head.  "I… I left something upstairs."  And with that, she fled from the melee.

            "Oh, grand," Harry said, jostling Ron.  "At least I'm not the only one who can make a girl cry."

            "I don't think 'twas Ron, for once," Hermione said wonderingly, staring fixedly up the stairs.  "I don't think that at all."

~~~

            She had calmed down by the time the present members of the Order met to discuss things, to gather ideas and sketchy plans of the things to come.  She wasn't about to look Severus in the eye across the big room, but she was calm.

            For now.

            As she heard ideas bandied about the room and scoffs bandied just as readily, it seemed to Dea that the ideas she was hearing were not new, and that they'd been launched and shot down many times.  The children had been sent upstairs quite some time ago, but Dea couldn't get her mind off of Harry, Harry with James's face and Lily's eyes.

            What was bothering her so?

            "What does he… you-know-who… hate more than anything?" she heard herself asking as she pressed her fingers to her eyes, trying to capture the thoughts lurking behind them, to pin down the source of her unease.

            Unfortunately, one of her sources of unease was the only person who could answer her question with any authority.  "A hasty—or ignorant—foe would say the Dark Lord hated Potter above all other things."  Severus's voice, though holding its ever-present tone of condescension, was starting to sound weary.  "But it is what Potter means.  Failure."

            Hearing exactly what she'd expected, Dea nodded.  _James's face and Lily's eyes.  "What made him fail?"_

            "It wasn't Potter at all, contrary to what his numerous acolytes say," Severus observed.

            "Is it possible to be any more of a rampantly biased prig?" Charlie asked loudly, cleaning his nails with a dagger that looked to be made of a dragon's talon.

            "I suppose it is, Weasley, but then I'd have to be addressing one of your ilk," Severus retorted.  

            "Stop," Professor McGonagall spoke sharply from one corner of the room.  "We can not beat the evil that looms before us if we are constantly tearing ourselves apart from the interior."  She turned to Dea and addressed her curtly, wanting to answer the question and move on.  "It was the protection and love of Ms. Evans, as you knew her, that made the attempt a failure."

            Dea stored the information away in her memory and plowed on.  "Has he failed any other time?"

            "Yes."  Severus spoke again.  "He has failed with me, for he thinks he has a loyal Death Eater."

            "He's not the only one," Bill observed in a facetiously mild tone.

            Ignoring him, Severus clenched his fists inside the voluminous sleeves of his robe and plowed on.  "His first failure, however, was you."  He studied Dea's face carefully and watched as her sharp mind settled easily around the idea.  "He thought you were dead, and it is clear you are not."

            _Seems we still have something in common, after all, _she thought, but the fleeting idea was filled with a sarcasm unlike her.  The walls were already starting to build up against the one man who had once been able to see right through them.  "Then I think we have a start."  


	10. Storms in the brain

            By midnight, they were too tired to move, much less think, but a solid idea had started to show itself at Dea's prodding.  She hadn't been a Ravenclaw for naught; her brains were as worthwhile to the Order as her healing.  By the end of the night, Mundungus Fletcher had no more qualms with the middle-aged brunette.  She was earning her place.

            "They don't like to be taken off-guard," she'd noted, watching everyone's faces.  Some looked as though they were considering it, others looked confused.

            "They never have been taken off-guard," Severus put in, his long fingers splaying and contracting on the scarred wooden table they sat at.  "The Dark Lord has been surprised at times, yes, but they have never been off-guard."          

            "You mean they've never been on the defensive," Dea insisted.  And so, among murmurs of understanding, they'd begun to formulate plans.

            From where he sat, isolated even among the group, Severus knew she was right, and kept a sneer locked on his face as though ridiculing her.  It was not news to him that many would die in the war against Voldemort, but he would not encourage Dea in planning. 

            He would not help her die again.

            He was the first out the door late that night, demons chasing him out the door.  Instead of Apparating, he walked, his feet traveling faster and faster as he carried himself away from the house and away from her.  

            "And so you call it 'brainstorming'?"  Arthur's brow furrowed and he pressed a hand to his head.  "Well, it's a bit mixed around up there, but it certainly doesn't feel like a storm."

            The Weasleys had decided to stay a while, since Remus was gone and it was easier for Arthur to get to the Ministry from the Order.  Ron, Harry, Ginny, and Hermione were asleep upstairs, not having realized the evening was going to culminate in a meeting.

            "You look troubled, dear."  Molly leaned over the table, her hands clasped around an ever-present cup of tea.  "Is there anything we can do?"

            Dea smiled and shook her head, cursing the thoughts that kept roiling through it.  _James and Lily, Christmas presents, faithful Death Eater and undead girl… _"No, I'm fine.  Just a bit worked up, is all."

            "It's all those storms!" Arthur exclaimed, nodding wisely.

            "Is there anyone who could… and who would be willing… to do some research?" Dea asked suddenly, pinning down one swirling thought in her head.  "Perhaps some research on if emotions are magically linked with memories?  And maybe some information about Pensieves?"

            Molly was nodding before Dea even finished her sentence.  "If you want a bookreader, Hermione's your girl."

            "Your son's girlfriend?" Dea asked mischievously, hiding her small smile with her teacup.  When Molly looked at her, eyes wide, she knew she'd hit her mark.

            "Girlfriend?  Oh, no, Dea, they're just friends.  She's not his girlfriend at all."  Molly shook her head and chuckled into her teacup.  "What a silly notion."

            Satisfied that she'd planted the seed in Molly's mind, knowing that life had to continue even in the midst of madness, she stood.  "Well then, my mistake.  I believe I'm off to bed."  And when she'd disappeared up the stairs, Arthur sighed and looked at his wife.

            "What a strange woman," he said.  "I wonder if she's ever seen one of those fellytones without wires."

~~~

            Time passed quickly with houseguests to share it with, but as days passed and brought the school term closer and closer, Dea began to long for time alone.  A course of action was becoming clearer with each meeting of the Order, and Dea willingly committed herself to it, even going so far as to place herself in the middle of the plan.  When she suggested as such, Dumbledore was the first to speak.

            "That would mean quite possibly placing yourself directly in danger," he spoke quietly, his eyes focused on her across the lengthened table.

            "I know."  How could she not?  It had been her idea, however incomplete, however distant in the future.  "But relatively, the risk is small.  And we still don't know what comes after."

            The rest of the Order was quiet, the mood somber.  The time had come for strategizing, for what Tonks and Hermione and Dea all called "war games," enjoying the small amount of humor the Muggle phrase leant the proceedings.  At this meeting, Harry, Hermione, and Ron all huddled together on one side of the table, their youth overshadowed by the necessity of their presence.

            "It'll have to do with me," Harry said quietly, one of the few times he'd bothered to speak.

            "Yes," Dumbledore agreed.  "It must."

            And though the timing was eerie and couldn't have been more unsettling, Harry gasped and covered his forehead with his palm, tears leaking from the corners of his eyes.  Simultaneously, Severus stood up, clapping his hand over the spot on his arm where the Dark Mark burned.  Without a word, he strode quickly from the house, leaving the gathered witches and wizards shocked and silent.

            Dea counted to ten in her head, trying to keep her breathing even.  She made it to eight before bolting from the table, barely making it to the washroom before getting violently ill.  

            _I think it's the scars that are the trouble.  _Her own voice, an ancient statement to a boy she'd loved, mocked her; in her mind's eyes she could see the pale, corded arm seared with the heated mark.

            With a small moan, she laid her cheek against the porcelain of the claw-footed tub and cried out her despair.

~~~

            "This is everything you found?" Dea held the enormous sheaf of parchment in her hand and looked at Hermione.  

            "Well yes," the girl said hesitantly.  "It's not much, I know, but it was all I was able to get from the limited resources I had with me, plus what I know from classes."  After a momentary look of chagrin, she brightened up.  "I'm sure I can look more up in the school library, though, there's tons—"

            Dea laid a gentle hand on the girls' shoulder and shook her head.  "No, this is plenty.  This is more than plenty."  Looking at the sheer volume of material Hermione had painstakingly copied by hand, Dea sighed.  "Don't you miss computers?  Just a little?"

            Hermione smiled then, shyness gone.  "A little," she agreed.  She dropped her voice to a whisper and leaned in confidentially.  "But don't mention it to Ron's dad.  He gets very manic and his eyes get quite large."  With a theatrical shudder, she leaned back.  "It's frightening."

            They shared a laugh, companionable, but Hermione quickly sobered.  "This idea you've had," she said slowly.  "It's dangerous, isn't it?"  They'd been told only the bare minimum, as Dumbledore had judged the fewer who knew, the better.  But before Dea could answer, she shook her head.  "I can tell because of the way Professor Snape acts."  When she saw the older woman flinch, Hermione sighed.  "Sorry.  But he's not happy about this."

            "He's not happy about anything," Dea retorted, wondering who, exactly, the adult in the situation was.

            Hermione bit her lip, uncomfortable with the personal turn in conversation.  "I should go," she said quickly.  "The train will be leaving soon."  She started to run out the door, then turned to look back at Dea.  "Owl if you need more research!"

            Looking at the stack of reading material she clutched, Dea sighed.  More research?  Highly unlikely.

~~~

            She was elbow-deep in Pensieve trivia when she heard the door open and shut.  Thankful for the interruption and half-hoping it was one of the Weasley twins with some bizarre invention or another to lighten up her day, she leapt from her seat at the kitchen table and rushed out—headlong into Remus.

            He looked tired but well; he'd apparently not starved on his mission, for his face, while still thin, was less gaunt than it had been when he left.  His cheeks were covered in dark stubble, and his eyes were drooping with fatigue.

            Realizing she was practically standing on his toes, Dea stepped back quickly, clearing her throat.  "Sorry," she said, a small smile quirking her lips.  "I thought it might be one of the Weasleys."

            He grinned then, easing the travel-wear from his face.  "It seems you've settled in and met everyone, then," he said approvingly.  He'd traveled more miles than he ever cared to travel again, but the results were good.  There were werewolves and half-giants and many others who were willing to help in any way they could.  The time was coming to choose sides, and they did not wish to choose improperly.

            "You've been gone over a month," she said, rushing to throw on tea.  Water onto boil, now where are the damned tea leaves?  Molly had been there so often that Dea had started taking her for granted.  As she stood helplessly, hands on hips, Remus eased her aside and opened the proper canister himself.  

            "And here I thought no one would notice," he said quietly, looking down at her.  "I'm sorry for the way it was when I left, Amadea," he said cautiously.  "Things are better now, yes?"

            Stunned by the gentility in his tone, she blinked owlishly at him for a moment.  "Yes, things are better now."

            "I hate to interrupt anything," Severus spoke from the doorway of the kitchen, having seen more than enough.  He'd entered the house quietly, as was his habit, hoping Dea would be upstairs or busy.  "But I've a message for the werewolf."  His lips stretched into a thin imitation of a smile as Remus turned to him, and he tried to ignore the idiotic and identical looks on Dea's and Remus's faces.  "Albus wishes to see you," he said coldly, and turned to walk out of the house.  "Don't take too long," he called as he neared the front door, laying his hand to the doorhandle and taking a deep breath to steady himself, to flush out the jealousy that wanted to settle in.  "It's a full moon tonight."


	11. Emotions

            "It's good to see you, as well, Severus," Remus muttered, stepping around Dea to follow Snape.  "I'll be back before moonrise," he threw over his shoulder, smiling at her with a tinge of sadness.  

            They Apparated just outside Hogwarts grounds, making the rest of the trek in silence.  Remus smirked at Severus's retreating back; if the Potions Master thought silence would unnerve a man who spent most of his time in solitude, then he was an imbecile.

            Severus muttered the password at the Headmster's entrance, his hands clenched helplessly at his sides.  It had been better to have the werewolf gone.  The memories of tauntings past, of a rivalry so long outgrown it was ludicrous, lessened when the reminders were not there.  Plus, Remus's absence meant Dea was alone, and some selfish part of Severus preferred that.  Jealousy, old but strong, burned brightly within him.

            "Welcome, my esteemed gentlemen," Dumbledore stood, studiously ignoring the hatred arcing between the two men standing before him.  "Both of you may sit."

            "Headmaster, I've lessons to prepare for tomorrow—" Severus started, only to be cut off by a small gesture from Dumbledore.

            "I want you here, Severus.  I will be speaking to Remus about what has been said, what has been planned during his absence.  I am an old man, my memory fails me from time to time."  Even as he said this, his eyes sparked with intelligent humor.  "It may be that I will need you to correct my possible errors."

            _Not bloody likely, _Severus thought, but he sat anyway.

            Dumbledore stuck to small things at first, the condition of each member of the Order, the addition of Harry and his cohorts in several of the meetings, the ways in which the group was warming up to Dea.  At this, Remus smiled and Severus shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

            "We—or rather, Miss Middlemarch herself—has suggested a way to busy some of the Death Eaters, a way to… how did she put it?  Throw a monkey wrench into their works, which I'm assuming means to put them off-balance."

            "As though they weren't unbalanced already," Remus said, but he was listening intently.

            "As you might already know, the Middlemarch family was pure-blooded, and therefore had many ties to other wizarding families."  He paused now, knowing his next statement would cause an uproar. 

            In the silence of the hesitation, Severus felt his stomach knot.  The plan was ludicrous, though it made sense, but he'd stayed silent throughout the process.  To put it simply, the idea frightened him.  

            "Miss Middlemarch has volunteered to visit a family member, if you will.  Someone who will have thought her dead."  Dumbledore watched Remus's face carefully.  "She intends to visit Lucius Malfoy in the hopes that it will stir up dissention among the Death Eaters and turn Voldemort against whomever was to have been responsible for her death."

            It had been a stroke of genius so stupid it was brilliant, Severus recalled.  The Dark Lord would be incensed at the thought that he'd failed, and worse, that he'd not known it at all.  The Death Eaters, Lucius Malfoy in particular, would be made fools of, and be vengeful because of it.  Time would be spent—wasted—looking for Dea, and the Order of the Phoenix could move offensively.

            But Remus didn't see the genius behind the plan.

            He stood from his chair, his face a bright red.  "This is ludicrous!" he shouted.  "For Merlin's sake, she's nearly died once, and she's going to be thrust back into the thick of it just so we can thumb our noses at the people who most want us dead?"  It was rare that he raised his voice, but his disbelief overrode his usual manners, and he whirled on Severus, who tented his fingers together and looked contemplative.

            The werewolf's reaction was similar to the one Severus himself had bottled inside, but instead of commiserating, he studied Remus over his fingertips and smiled nastily.  "Temper, temper," he chastised.  "She volunteered, Lupin."

            "You would condone this?" he asked Severus disbelievingly.  Out of them all, Remus would have thought the former Death Eater most likely to protect the lark who had barely lived.  "Amadea's been gone for twenty years, and this is the first thing you'd have her do?"

            Whether it was the look in Lupin's eyes or Severus's ingrained talent for Ligilimency, he knew suddenly and clearly what was causing the reaction.  "Ohh," he said, drawing out the syllable suggestively.  "Is it that she's been gone for so long a period, or back for so little?"  At Remus's sharp look, he smiled predatorily, feeling his stomach roll over.  "Do you really fancy yourself in love with her, Lupin, you great protector?"

            In a move so quick Severus didn't see it coming, Remus had one wiry, strong hand wrapped in the material of Severus's robes, their faces only inches apart.  "Do you really fancy yourself _not_, Severus?  And if I do and you don't, which of us is really the greater fool?"

            "Stop this!" Dumbledore roared, flinging out a hand and sending them both sprawling into their chairs.  "Remus, the decision is made.  Severus, I ask that you not bait a fellow member of the Order.  You two are acting like children, or worse, like adolescents.  If and when I wish to see such squabbles, I will take my old bones to the Great Hall and provoke a food fight!"

            "I beg your pardon," Remus said stiffly.

            Dumbledore regarded them both with a complete lack of surprise.  It wasn't as though either of them had revealed or suggested anything that hadn't started in the very halls of Hogwarts.  

            "Remus, go home, back to Grimmauld Place.  I've no doubt you will try to talk Amadea out of this task, but I have no fear that she will be talked out of it.  It was, after all, her idea."  He then turned to his Potions Master and wished, not for the first time, that the man could find himself whole after so many years of fragmentation.  "Severus, you may return to the dungeons and prepare whatever need be for tomorrow's round of classes."  

            Remus left the office first, knowing if he didn't his anger would only continue to manifest itself.  He walked down the hallway quickly, the thin traveling cloak he still wore over his robes billowing around him.  So ensconced in his thoughts was Remus that it took him several moments to hear the young voices clamoring his name behind him.  Clearing the anger he knew was written on his features, he turned.

            "You're back!"  Harry, ever hungry for affection, especially since Sirius's death, gave Remus a quick hug.

            "Did you see lots of things?" Ron asked excitedly.  "There're tons of things I'd like to travel and see."

            Hermione stood quietly at the back of the trio, watching, apparently caught up in thought.

            "It's good to see you all," he said, fixing a smile on his face.

            Hermione frowned a little.  "It's a full moon, Professor Lupin.  Shouldn't you be back at… you-know-where?"

            _Smart little mite, _he thought, not without affection.  "Yes, Hermione.  I'm on my way now.  It's only that the headmaster wished to see me."

            "Don't you all have somewhere to be?" Severus spoke from the niche leading to the headmaster's office, his voice frigid.  

            The coincidence of location was not lost on Hermione, who looked at Remus with unnerving intensity.

            "Go on," Remus said quietly.  "I'll see you all soon enough."

            When they all merely stared at him, he flapped a hand impatiently.  "Go on now before you have points taken."

            They said their goodbyes listlessly and walked down the hall, Hermione snatching at the backs of the boys' robes to slow them down.  "Listen," she mouthed.

            "Miss Granger was, as usual, correct, Lupin.  Full moon soon.  Maybe that explains your… tantrum."  Severus smirked with an insolence he didn't really feel, crossing his arms over his chest to ward off a sudden shudder.

            "My outburst stems solely from the fact that you're still the same emotionless git you were twenty years ago," Remus said quietly, his eyes fixed on Severus's dark ones.

            "Why display my emotions like an exhibitionist when you seem to possess and exhibit enough for the both of us?" Severus asked, advancing.  His eyes narrow, he lowered his voice to a hiss.  "You don't know her, Lupin."

            "And you don't own her, Snape," Remus retorted, sweeping a hand through his shock of streaked hair.  Watching his adversary smile smugly at the statement, knowing Snape was simply provoking him out of perverseness, Remus let out a small noise that was very close to being a growl.  "Your arrogance sickens me."

            "And your ignorance never fails to stun me," Severus said.  Emotionless?  Hardly.  Emotions were tumbling over and all through him, none of which he would—or could—hold onto.

            _Hate me if you must, as long as you stay away from me._

            Shaking imperceptibly, he turned and clattered down the stairs to the dungeons.

            In the darkened hallway beyond, three Gryffindors regarded each other with wide eyes.


	12. Up to speed

            He had slammed the door, and that was her first indication that something was wrong.  Remus Lupin, by nature, wasn't a door-slammer.  

            Torn between going to him and asking what was wrong and ducking in her room to hide from whatever had made him so angry, Dea held her ground and sat at the kitchen table, fiddling with a long-since cold cup of coffee she'd managed to brew.

            She missed Starbucks.  Even a woman on the run could find one every city block in a place like New York.

            He slammed into the kitchen with as much fervor as he'd treated the front door with and her hand jerked, sending the tepid liquid spilling over the scarred wood of the kitchen table.  "Hello again," she said lightly, raising an eyebrow at his uncharacteristic theatrics.

            "You're a bloody idiot," he exclaimed, gripping the edge of the counter and keeping his back to her.  He couldn't look at her, not just yet, not with Snape's accusations circling in his head and the moon only hours away. 

            Surprised, Dea sat back in her chair.  "Well, I've certainly never thought so, but I'm bound to be biased."

            He whirled on her then, mossy eyes alight with anger, fear, and something she couldn't identify.  "Let's forget all about the sly, clever little remarks.  Let's just abandon those entirely for a few moments of frankness, shall we?"  He stared at her intently, noticing that she'd changed into casual clothes, a pair of Muggle-made jeans and a white button-down that looked very much like a man's.  "You're not going to see Malfoy."

            "And you're not the boss of me," she said, lilting it like a child, but her ire was close to rising.  "I take it Professor Dumbledore… Albus… brought you up to speed?"

            _Up to speed.  _The unfamiliar phrase bounced around in his head, but he was sharp enough to judge it by context.  "He told me what you'd planned.  There are other ways," he insisted, planting both hands on the table and looking down at her.  When she turned large, dark eyes up to his, he nearly flinched.

            _Do you really fancy yourself in love with her?_

"There are no other ways," she said, wondering what had gotten into him.  "I don't wish to argue about this, Remus."

            "I do, but fortunately for you, the time is a bit inconvenient," he said, his voice sounding strained.  Why now, when he had to do all his thinking, when there were important things to consider?  "I must go."

            He walked out of the kitchen and she could hear his worn boots stomping up the stairs to his room.  

~~~

            She had nearly read over all of the pile of research Hermione had given her, her eyes crossing and doubling many of the words as evening wore into night.  She heard nothing of Remus, which made her marginally nervous.  There was a wolf in the house and she had no idea where.  But because she trusted him, she didn't worry.

            Her mind began to wander as the pile of parchment grew thinner, and she wondered what had gotten into the lycanthropic wizard.  He had never struck her as the overprotective type before, or the type who would fly off the handle at nothing.

            Her first reflex was to blame it on the full moon, but the more she thought about it, the more it made perfect sense to her.  The man had, after all, lost his two closest friends to Death Eaters.  He was bound to be a bit unnerved by the entire experience.

            That was her last conscious thought as she laid her head down to her arms, promising herself she'd only rest her eyes for a moment.

            _Come on, come on… _

            Her dreams had always been vivid, sometimes frighteningly so, and she thought this one was no exception.  Someone was insistent, tugging her hand with a sharp pressure and making her follow, to wander through the darkened, empty halls of the Black House.  In her dream, the lamp on the table had blown out, its light replaced by the moon shining its pallid light in through the single kitchen window.

            She maneuvered the stairs sluggishly, reluctantly following her leader up them and down the hallway to the room she normally slept in.

            _Nothing here for me to see, _she thought, but her hand was released.  Figuring she may as well rest while she was there, she laid down on the bed and resumed sleep seamlessly, never having looked once at her guide.

            At the side of the bed, a large, silver-coated wolf gripped the witch's shoes in his teeth, pulling them off one by one.

~~~

            When she awoke the next morning in her bed, she thought little about how she'd gotten there or what had happened the evening before.  After showering, she went downstairs, her mind starting to puzzle again over Remus's behavior of the evening before even as she craved the cappuccino she'd never get.  

            He was already awake when she got downstairs, sitting at the kitchen table with a pair of delicate-looking wire-rim glasses perched on his nose as he looked through the papers she'd left strewn over the table.  At her quiet entrance, he looked up from his reading, making her step falter just a bit.

            The glasses, she thought, were nice.

            "Ah… early riser," she commented awkwardly, muttering a hopeful _Accio coffee.  _Though she had to pronounce it distinctly and make the wand movement precise, it was a simple enough spell that she could do it correctly, though she did it with little hope.

            It seemed as though no one in England liked coffee.

            But to her surprise, a single steaming mug made its way through the kitchen doors, wobbling only slightly.  Shocked, she snagged it from midair and looked at him.  "You made coffee?"

            "I had plenty of time this morning."  It never seemed as though he needed much sleep in his wolf form.  The evening before had been spent curled up next to his bed, looking out the window at the moon and thinking everything through.  The only conclusion he'd been able to come to was that no matter who had been right in Dumbledore's chambers, which accusations had held water and which hadn't, Amadea's idea had merit.

            "So what comes next?" he asked, setting down the parchment and removing the reading glasses.  "After you stage your family reunion, assuming Malfoy doesn't kill you, what's the next move?"

            She sat down across from him and trailed her fingers over the parchment, wondering how she'd come to be such a part of things in only a matter of months.  An invisible girl with only one friend, strange parents and orphan siblings, a drifter and a runaway.  She'd been many things, but she'd never been so closely tied to a unit, to a team.

            "The next move is like shooting a gun," she said quietly.  "That's where these come in."  And for the first time since the idea's inception, she weaved the whole thing together.

~~~

            "A gun?"  Arthur Weasley looked confused as he peered at her across the table.  "One of those Muggle things that flings metal at people?"

            "We're not using guns," Dea said patiently.  The idea had gathered steam until she was presenting it in front of the entire Order.  The timing was becoming crucial; Severus's information was that Voldemort was planning a move, and soon.  "It's a metaphor."

            "A what?"  The two oldest Weasley boys chorused together.

            Minerva McGonagall winced.  "I always suggested we should have a class where proper English is continued to be taught."

            "Forget the gun."  Glancing at Hermione with a smile, Dea continued speaking.  Her audience, she had to admit, was rapt.  Every member of the Order was staring at her in confusion, wonder, disbelief, or a patent mixture of all three.  Only Severus's face was unreadable.

            "Hermione did the research for me, and I'm fairly certain this is possible.  Harry discovered just how powerful memories can be when You-Know-Who's wand started spewing its history.  So I figured we could bank on that."

            The idea was fairly simple.  When the Death Eaters were tearing their time between seeking Dea and preparing for an offensive move, Harry would confront Voldemort, accompanied by several other members of the Order.  Each of their wands and their minds would be loaded with memories of love and the people who had died for their love of another or their love of the cause.

            _James's face and Lily's eyes.  _With her love so powerful and inlaid into her son, Dea was banking on the fact that Lily would still be, as Remus had put it, appallingly good.  

            And when the evening was over, only one person's opinion mattered.

            "I'll do it," Harry said bravely, his hair falling into his eyes.  He thought of Sirius, hidden behind a veil which no one could ever move, and knew that Sirius would have done it.  His father would have done it.  "Just tell me when."


	13. Confronting

            "Focus."

            With her eyes tightly shut, Dea pointed the wand at the creature in the cage.  She knew even without peeking that it did no good; she could hear the damnable thing squeaking and chewing on its bars.

            "Focus," Remus repeated, stepping behind her and watching her as she extended the wand with a steady hand.

            "That would be much easier," she said through clenched teeth, "If you weren't such a bloody hoverer."  She could feel him behind her, the subtle heat that spoke of his nearness.

            The time for action was drawing nearer, and Dea wondered daily if she was capable of the small task she'd assigned herself.  Remus's lessons in magic—or rather on tapping into unused potential—were supposed to set her mind at ease.  

            So why did he make her feel so damned uneasy?  Rolling her shoulders, she thought perhaps the better word would be _itchy.  _

            "Let's try something," he said, stepping in front of her and placing his hands on her shoulders.  "Open your eyes."

            _Bad idea, _she retorted in her head, but she opened her eyes to find herself staring into his. 

            Then he did something that nearly made her heart stop.

            _"Punctum,_" he said casually, rolling up his sleeve and then pointing his wand at his arm.  Immediately a wound opened up in his arm, spilling blood down it.

            "Jesus!" she hissed, pointing her wand and healing his arm instantly, her eyes wide and disbelieving.  He stepped aside and gestured to the creature in the cage.  Angrily spouting the banishing spell he'd given her earlier, she flicked her wand at the dark creature and it instantly showered into ashes.

            She was out of her seat in an instant, the creature forgotten as she grasped his arm, wrapping her fingers around it as though to assure herself she'd left no marks.  Feeling muscles and tendons bunch and flex at her touch, she let out a small noise of disgust and pushed him away from her.  "What was that?  Are you completely insane?"

            "Not last I checked," he said pleasantly.  He really was pleased with himself.  There had been no sign of progress before his rash action.  "I was only helping you focus, Amadea.  And it worked."

            "Helping?  Helping me?  In what twisted world is it okay for you to hurt yourself?  What if I couldn't heal you?"  She was frantic with it, frantic with the thought that her healing might be depended on.  She'd been too late, by far, to help her parents and siblings.  Had they depended on her?

            "I trust you," he said simply.  

            She looked up at him then, the anger snuffed from her eyes, immediately replaced by the faintest shimmer.  No tears, not yet.  She'd learned more about holding back her tears in the last months than ever before.  "Don't," she returned simply.  "Because you shouldn't."  But even as the fear coursed through her, there was a simple joy intermingled with it.  To be trusted so implicitly had been a thing of the past for her—a thing associated only with family.

            When he said nothing, only continued to smile at her in that maddeningly gentle but self-satisfied way, she shook her head.  "This is so messed up," she said sadly.  

            "I know."

            "No," she stressed, standing so she was toe to toe with him, her eyes boring into his.  Denials only worked for so long, and she was too smart not to see at least a little of what was starting to happen, not only to him but to her, as well.  "_This is messed up."  To illustrate her point, she touched a hand to his chest, and then to hers._

            And though her statement took the smile from his face, it only faded away into a soft look of understanding.

            "I know," he repeated.  "Hasn't it always been?"

            Below them, on the bottom floor of the house, the door slammed open and shut, and people started arriving.

            The time for action was drawing near.

~~~

            She got there as a Muggle would have, walking up to the front door so as to avoid the numerous magic detectors the rampantly paranoid Lucius Malfoy had charmed his mansion with.  With a grimace of distaste, she lifted the snake's head door knocker, then thought better of it and let it rest silently on the heavy wooden door.  Taking a deep breath, she turned the doorknob and pushed open the door, finding no resistance.

            _It's an arrogant fool who would only proof his house against magic.  _

            "Can I be helping you, Miss?"  A house-elf, filthy and cowering in the corner, eyed her.

            "I'm family," she said simply.  "I'm here to see your master, but I've a feeling he's already coming."  And even before the words had left her mouth, she heard his footsteps.  Careful to watch around her, taking note of the exits and hallways, she walked briskly down the great hall of the mansion, her own footsteps sounding confidently across the stone floors.

            "Is there someone you wished to see?"  His voice hadn't changed in a great while, the silkiness only refined, the cruelty less concealed.  His walking stick was poised at his side, and his fingers slid over it suggestively.

            Dea looked up then, letting her marked hair fall away from her face, and she smiled charmingly.  "Hello, Cousin," she said sweetly, making the most of the accent she knew he would despise.  "Ready to welcome a poor relation?"

            She had the satisfaction of seeing him stumble back, quicksilver eyes wide and quite possibly frightened.  She could only hope that was the case.  

            He composed his face quickly; she had to admire him for that.  The cold disgust was fixed as firmly in place as it had been upon his approach, and he looked down his nose at her.  "The Middlemarches are no relation of mine."  After a moment's thought, he added, "Especially since they're all stone-cold dead, too stupid and untalented to defend themselves."

            "Oh, not all of us," she said, refusing to rise to his bait.  "It seems they missed one."  Casually, she buffed her fingernails on the front of her robe with a nonchalance so fake she was sure he could sense it.  "I thought I'd find you celebrating the death of a common relative—dear Sirius."  She shook her head, clucking her tongue.  "Though I must say, very poor showing of _your kind," she stressed the two words nastily.  "Since he more or less died accidentally, and not directly at the hands of one of you fantastical masked superheroes.  Or is it antiheroes?  I can never keep it straight."  She felt herself shaking with a mixture of fury and fear, and the fury was a great deal stronger than she'd expected.  _

            He was shaking as well, his lips compressed into a thin, stiff line.  No one insulted the Death Eaters as though it were a commonplace thing.  No one insulted them with laughter in their voice.

            But still she continued to talk.  

            "Hey, look, no hard feelings, cous.  I know how these things are.  You all ought to check out a few movies, take a few lessons from _The Godfather.  _In the meanwhile, in the several years it'll take you to figure out how to use a VCR, why don't you let your overdramatic, cartoonish 'Dark Lord' know that he failed.  Again.  How must it feel to have not only The Boy Who Lived, but The Woman as well?"  

            She'd baited him well; he grabbed his wand but seemed at a loss as to which particular curse to start with.  Before he could take good aim, she'd drawn herself into the lark, the body resplendent in the gloom of the mansion.  She streaked past him toward a window, drooping dangerously low as she tried to keep her concentration—and animal form—intact.  It was just low enough.

            Instead of aiming again with his wand, Lucius struck out in pure, thoughtless rage, striking the bird with his walking stick.  She felt fragile skin tear, air-filled bones snap, and though her brain was swarming with black pellets of pain, she made it out the window and back toward Grimmauld Place.


	14. Hurt and heal

            "I don't like this," Molly Weasley said for what seemed to be the thousandth time.  "Someone ought to have gone with her."

            Remus rubbed a hand over his face and looked warily at the three pots of water boiling on the stove.  Molly hadn't known what else to do, and so she'd begun making tea like a madwoman.  "She wouldn't allow it," he said quietly.  A derisive snort sounded from the corner and Remus turned his head slowly, fixing his eyes on Severus.

            He'd been sitting in the corner all night, thumbing through a book.  He'd not read a single word, his eyes too unfocused to absorb any of the print, his ears attuned for the slightest noise outside.  

            "Watch yourself, Snape," Charlie Weasley growled.  "Didn't exactly see you all volunteerin' to go along."

            "That would be, idiot Weasley, because it could hardly be wise for me to reveal myself as an enemy to, of all people, Lucius Malfoy."  His voice was disdainful, mildly amused, but he felt acutely the sting of helplessness, the ache of having no particular purpose.  He felt the sting that Sirius Black must have felt while cooped up in his ancestral tomb of a house, and Severus wondered if it wasn't a black sort of justice that he was feeling helpless now.

            He had no time to ponder the matter, however; a loud thump had the front door rattling in its frame and the people in the house on their feet.

            Remus reached the door first and jerked it open, sending an unconscious Dea spilling into the house.  Her hair was tangled and matted, her eyes open and rolled back to the whites.  Fighting his way to the front, Severus swallowed the bile that rose into his throat when he saw that one whole side of her robes was rent, scraped, raw skin showing through the gap.  Even as Remus moved to pick her up, Severus stepped forward.

            "Back, Lupin," he commanded tersely, all background noise fading to nothing, his heart speeding in his chest.  

            How many times could she possibly leave?

            And how could something that wasn't his be taken away?

            "_Mobilicorpus," _he said, coaxing his wand so she was in an even prone position.  He floated her through the house with speed and ease, depositing her on the kitchen table.  There was no time to maneuver the stairs.  

            Only Molly, Albus, Severus and Remus came into the kitchen; the other members stayed in the outer rooms, a hush over them.  

            "Her arm's broken," Molly said, looking up at Albus with worried eyes.

            "So it is," he said mildly, though in his heart he already grieved.  So much hurt for such a short errand.  For such a small thing.

            "We need Poppy," Remus said, fluttering his hands over the numerous scrapes laddering up and down her arms, blood oozing slowly but steadily from them.  

            _I have potions back at the school, things I could use to help her… _Severus was mute for a moment, however, watching her blood soak into the wood of the table.  "I can go back to the school," he finally said with numb lips.  "I can go back to the school and get her."

            Albus laid a hand on his shoulder and he accepted the rare moment of comfort from the older wizard.  "She will rouse before you get back.  She has not fainted because of her injuries, but rather because of her exertion."

            _But how long?  How long before she wakes up?  _The thought was simultaneous in both Severus and Remus, their eyes locking over the table.

            For the moment, at least, they were unified.

            Only a moment later, they were split apart by a chasm wider than physical miles as the Dark Mark on Severus's forearm started to burn.  He let out a single, sharp hiss, then tried to ignore it.  It wasn't easy, as the pain threaded through his arm, through his veins, straight to his heart and his brain in sharp, long wires.  He stood firm, his eyes fixed on the woman he no longer knew.

            Everyone else's eyes, however, were fixed on him.

            "Go," Remus said, unable to keep the coolness from his voice.  

            "I'll not take orders from you, Lupin."  Even as he said it, he grated his teeth against another onslaught of pain.  Why now?  Why when he most wanted to stay?  It was the one moment of his time in the Order when he knew, inarguably, that his place was there, with them.

            "You must answer the summons, Severus.  It is not, as you know, a request.  They will want to tell you of Miss Middlemarch's existence, and you must be surprised."  Though Albus wondered how, exactly, they would lie to him.  How they would tell him she came to be alive, since they'd lied to him in the first place.

            With an inaudible hiss of frustration, Severus turned away from the table, wishing momentarily to cut his bloody arm off and have done with their summonses and orders.

            He ran out the door, the hem of his coat flaring large and wide behind him, and Disapparated just outside the front door.

~~~

            "Severus… so fantastically nice of you to join us.  There was some difficulty getting away, yes?  For you are tardy."  Voldemort's voice reached his ears through the heavy, hot mask he wore, and once again tasting bile in his throat, Severus bowed his head to the man, the monster, he'd come to hate.

            "Trouble, indeed, my Lord, escaping from the fools who daily surround me.  How may I be at your service?"  But the meeting was not a usual one.  The Death Eaters were gathered around their Lord, masks cold and impassive.  Severus wondered if they knew how obvious they were, how clear it was they'd been there for quite some time.  They'd all been summoned before he had, summoned to cook up a lie.  

            Summoned to serve up the lies they all willingly consumed, for there was no truth among the Death Eaters.

            There was no honesty among the evil.

            And then he snapped his mind shut like a trap, cleaning it ruthlessly and leaving it gleaming.  

            "Have you noticed anything unusual around Hogwarts?  A woman, perhaps?  Someone from your past?"  Lucius spoke this time, and his voice was eager, rapt with thoughts of revenge on the woman who'd come to see him.

            "I have not, Lucius.  You should well know that all I see I report to our Lord.  There has been nothing unusual at Hogwarts of late, lest you count the rising number of fools willing to support Dumbledore."  It was the truth, though twisted, and it passed well enough through Voldemort's keen mind.  

            "Fools seem to run rampant at the school, Severus, as well you know.  Even my own son is a fool, bound by his desire to excel at things that matter not in the greater scheme.  Quidditch, academics…" Severus could hear the sneer behind the mask.  "Trying to best that… that scarred Potter whelp!  No, even the brightest of Hogwarts are fools."

            Severus swallowed the nearly mindless fury that smoldered in him; Lucius Malfoy was no more a father than a mind-diseased rattlesnake would be.  If there was any luck in the world, any kindness at all, his intelligent son would come out on the other side of the battles able to outgrow the malformed family fate had tossed him into.   

            "I have some mixed news for you, Severus."  Voldemort spoke quietly, not out of any sort of respect, but for the simple fact that he enjoyed the quietude it forced among his followers.  They were merely tools, things to be used.  They needn't have voices lest he commanded so.  "It seems a friend of yours has returned from the dead.  The Squibs' spawn is back; however, she has chosen to align herself with the Mudbloods and sentimental fools.  She paid a visit to Lucius this evening, spewing worthless threats and attempting to curse Lucius."

            Severus was thankful for the mask for many reasons, not the least of which was that it hid the facial expressions he sometimes couldn't control.  The lies spouted as easily from Voldemort's malformed lips as they did from Severus's thin ones, and the fact that they did angered the Potions Master.

            "That is most unfortunate, my Lord.  If the other side is recruiting warriors as magically worthless as she, then victory is sure."

            "Yes," Voldemort said, ruminating.  "Victory is sure."  He paused for a few moments, then dismissed Severus.  "I only wanted to dispatch the unfortunate news, my faithful servant."

            "My gratitude, my Lord.  Your discretion is invaluable."  Severus bowed his head, and even as he did so heard the thoughts in Lucius's.  Even though Severus was gone from the proceedings only moments later, he already knew what was being discussed. 

            The moment the Hogwarts teacher was gone, Lucius spoke.  "Worthless or no, we are to find her, yes my Lord?"

            "Yes, yes, yes!" Voldemort cried with unrestrained rage.  "Find the surviving whore and make a lesson of her!"  He stroked his fingers over the arms of his chair and then added something else, nearly too quiet for him to hear.  "Crabbe, you are to stay here.  It seems we have something to discuss."

            Crabbe, the man who had been responsible for the execution of Amadea twenty years before, swallowed convulsively under his mask even as his compatriots left him. 

            By the time the screams started, they were out of hearing range.

~~~

            They'd managed to slow the bleeding and were waiting on Madame Pomfey to arrive to heal the bone when Dea finally awoke.

            She started with a gasp, cold sweat breaking out over her face and neck.  Wide-eyed, she looked at those gathered around her, then fell back.  Remarkably, she began to laugh, her voice breathless and weak, but there.

            She winced as she felt the pain in her arm and let her head fall back to the table.  "He… was so pissed…" she said, gasping as she shifted her arm.  

            "Pissed?"  Molly showed genuine confusion at the term.  "Lucius Malfoy?"  The idea of the platinum-blonde drunk as a lord, though surely amusing in any other circumstance, only made things more muddled.

            Remembering where, precisely, she was, Dea laughed again, ending it with a pained groan.  "Mad.  He was so angry."  Feeling around with her left hand, she snagged her wand and pointed it at her right arm.  "_Sano os," _she said, gritting her teeth as the bone healed.  _"Sano viscus," _she said, watching with mild interest as the skin slipped back together, leaving it faintly paler than it had been before.  And though all she really wanted to do was sleep, exhausted from the flight, she pointed the wand at her robes.  "_Consuo… vestis."_  And the split in the marigold-colored fabric was gone.

            Laying her head back down, she rolled her eyes back to look at Remus and Albus, both upside-down in her vision.  "He'll come," she said surely.  "They'll all be looking for me now."

            And as her eyes fluttered shut, she heard the door open and close, and saw Severus standing over her.  Then she slept. 


	15. The loading of the wands

            She awoke to total silence underneath a massive pile of blankets on a bed that wasn't hers.  Her arm held no ache, but she couldn't keep from remembering the searing pain, the body-wide ache that had resounded when Lucius had hit her.

            Slimy bastard.

            Dea sat up and found herself alone in the room, a large, well-furnished bedroom she hadn't seen during her explorations around the house.  No sooner had she dug herself out from under the covers, however, than the painting on the wall started yelling at top volume.

            It was a newly-hung painting of a very large witch wearing a set of spectacularly ugly floral-print robes.  Her cheeks were heavily rouged and under one arm she held a large tabby cat that she stroked gently even while screaming raucously.

            "She's awake!" the witch yelled, tipping her head back to get a little more volume out of her already voluminous windpipes.  "The Yank's awake!"

            The door was immediately yanked open by Remus, and after he half-stumbled into the room, eyes shaded from lack of sleep, Severus slunk in after him silently.  The painting had been Dumbledore's version of diplomacy between the two—neither would allow the other to sit and watch over Dea.  So, feeling as though he were refereeing a children's argument, Dumbledore had informed them that neither would do it, and he conjured the portrait of his great-aunt.

            "How are you?" Remus asked, settling for standing at the foot of the bed with his hands shoved deeply into his robe pockets.  

            "Fine," Dea said, looking first at Remus, then at Severus.  "They're coming, aren't they?"  When Severus inclined his head, locks of black hair falling over his shoulders, she nodded slightly.  "I knew they would."

            "What did that… what hurt you?"  The words were out of Remus's mouth nearly before she was done speaking.

            "Lucius did it," Severus answered before she could.  "He hit you, didn't he, when you flew away?"  She nodded, eyes wide and still fixed on his.  "He was thinking about it the whole time—"  Knowing how she felt about his status as a Death Eater, Severus trailed off, sick with the feel of her breaking bones, with the sights and sounds he'd acquired from Lucius's brain.

            "It's all right," she said quietly.  There was no time for grudges now.  In fact, there was little time for anything.  She slid out of the bed, glad to see they'd left her in her robes.  Remus started to take a step forward and she shook her head.  "I'm fine.  But there's no time to waste.  We need to start the next step now, and we'll need as many people here as we can get."

            "Already done," Remus said.  "They're all waiting."

~~~

            The downstairs rooms had been magically expanded to the size of ballrooms with one nearly empty room in the middle.  In that room sat Harry with Dumbledore, Hermione, and Ron.  Dea strode through the gathered masses, ignoring the stares, the murmurs.  

            "Hello, Harry," she said, smiling brightly, a little too brightly.  Things were about to get down to the wire, and she couldn't imagine resting it all on a boy so spindly.  

            "'Lo, Miss Middlemarch."  No nerves showed in his eyes, only a feverish intensity.  _He'll be glad when it's over, she thought, briefly brushing her hand over his shoulder.  And who could blame him?_

            "It'll have to be you to go with him," she said, nodding at Dumbledore.  "And you," she added, looking over her shoulder at Severus.  Neither man was surprised, but Remus was.

            "What about me?" he asked, stepping forward.  "He's practically family, shouldn't I--?"

            "No."  Dumbledore was the one to answer, his voice firm.  "Remus, we do not know how long we will have to travel."

            "You can't travel much by magic, because that's easily detected," Dea said, nodding.  "And you don't know if you'll come through full moon."  She stepped back slightly, twining cool fingers with Remus's long ones in a gesture of comfort.  "You understand."

            He didn't speak, only nodded and squeezed her hand a little, wondering at how small her fingers were.  A woman with hands no bigger than a girl's, and she'd faced down Malfoy with amusement. 

            She was insane.

            "Let's get this done," she said briskly.

            They sat in a row, Harry sitting between the Hogwarts faculty member who cared for him most and the one who cared for him least.  But for the moment, at least, they were once again bound by a common cause, and bound by the losses they knew they could have.

            From where she stood at the back of the room, Dea thought about her own losses, the fact that there were Death Eaters hunting for her, and that they'd be hunting for Severus when all was over.  

            A Pensieve sat in front of each of the men, empty at the moment, but only moments away from being filled.  Three lines had formed in the back of the room, and Dea thought of amusement park rides with a small smile on her face.  

            They'd come in droves, members of the Order, family members of Order members, Hogwarts students.  Though there was no way of guaranteeing they were loyal, there was no chance of them betraying Grimmauld Place or staging a siege—Mad Eye Moody and Kingsley Shacklebolt stood at the door, inspecting wands on the way in and modifying memories on the way out.  Tonks, Mundungus, and Arthur stood behind the sitting wizards, wands poised for any sign of trouble.

            They had all come to help.  They had come to share their memories of love, of family, of people lost in the fight against Voldemort.

            They had come to load the wands.

            Three people started the flood; Molly Weasley stood in front of Harry, Minerva McGonagall in front of Severus, and Remus in front of Dumbledore.  They stepped to the Pensieves, extracted a memory from their head, and deposited it in the Pensieve.  Then they stepped to the side, or back to the end of the line, and the process repeated itself.

            Some memories were a bright silver, so bright they were almost white, and others were the lovely, tarnished color of old silver, the shades multi-tonal and swirling.  A few memories, Dea noted with fascination, were chrome-colored, winking in the dim light like a fine automobile.

            When the Pensieves appeared to grow full, the person sitting behind them would dip their wand in the bowl, mutter the incantation, and watch as the wispy, silvery memories were sucked into their wands.

            When everyone had taken their turn, and some several, the rooms began to clear out, and Dea stepped in front of the trio.  "You each have a memory or two stored away in your own minds, don't you?  Something you can use?"  Harry nodded, Dumbledore merely regarded her with a smile, and Severus looked deeply shamed.

            She felt her heart wrench for the man who had come from the abused boy, the scared and lonely boy she'd known so long ago.  "I've not given any of mine yet," she said casually, stepping in front of him.  

            Slowly, purposefully, she withdrew selected memories from her head, slipping them into the bowl one by one.

            Her parents, with so much love they needed a few more children to give it to, hugging the three of their mismatched children with blissful smiles.

            Her siblings, accepting what they didn't understand out of love, watching with glee as she popped out of a fire.  

            "Take those," she said quietly, for Severus only.  "But not in your wand."

            Understanding, the look on his face nearly pained, he took the wand, dipped it into her memories, then pulled them to his own head.  He tilted his head back immediately, feeling something he hadn't felt in years.

            Tears.

            "We're not done," she said, fighting her own tears.  Out of the corner of her eye she saw Harry and Albus depart, leaving them alone with their pasts.  She withdrew one more memory, placed it in the bowl-like instrument, then touched her hand to his face.  "I'm so sorry," she said.  "I'm sorry for it all."

            He said nothing, had nothing to say, but he did not jerk from her touch, and she kept her hand on his face even as he drew her last memory from the Pensieve.  

_            "Like this."  Her voice was impatient, her face pouty as she tried the charm for what seemed to be the hundredth time.  _

_            "No!"  He grabbed her wrist, but was gentle as he turned it.  "Like that."  Her skin was slightly warm, his own fingers cool in the damp of the castle._

_            As he let go of her wrist, she practiced the movement again, a small smile on her face.  "All right, Sev, best you watch it now or I'll never get it right again."_

_            "If all you've in you is one good go, Dea, then save it for exams," he said.  She turned to face him, wand poised at the ready, and he ducked to the side, a crooked thin-lipped smile on his face.  "Don't point that at me, Middlemarch.  If you're wanting a target for your spell, try it on yourself.  Oh, that's right.  You did that last week."  The thin smile turned into an actual grin, lifting his sharp cheekbones and making the dark eyes crinkle at the corners.  _

_            She glowered and kept her wand pointed at him menacingly, chasing him around the room and shouting threats at the top of her lungs._

And in the memory, it was obvious how much she had loved him.

            It was impossible to overlook how much he had loved her, even as he would have sworn he knew nothing of love.

            His eyes glittered, not hard for once, but far away, guilty in some ways, hurting for the taint he'd brought on them both.  "I'm sorry," he echoed back to her, knowing it could be his last opportunity to say it.  He brought his hand up to cover hers over his cheek, and spoke one word that took more bravery than he knew he had.  "Friends?"  

            He knew nothing of it, nothing of friendship, camaraderie, true affection.  But he was, if nothing else, intelligent enough to learn.  

            Thinking of her, hands linked with Remus's wide-palmed hands, Severus knew he was also intelligent enough to give away what he knew he no longer had.

            "Friends," she agreed, closing her eyes.

            The time to act was upon them.


	16. Alone

            The house was still full, though all who were left were members of the Order.  To Dea, it felt like something from a history book—sending off the chosen warriors to fight a battle for them all.  

            She wanted them all to leave.

            She was exhausted from the evening's magics, exhausted from the evening's emotions.  More than anything, she was scared for the three men, one hardly old enough to be termed such, who had left Grimmauld Place with little more than wands and memories. 

            So when she walked into the front rooms of the Black house to see the Weasley twins performing tricks on each other, Tonks and Mundungus arguing about something, and several older wizards playing a game of Wizards Chess, her patience was running thin.  Overwhelmed and underprepared to see the groups of people going about daily routines, she leaned on the door jamb, fingers wrapping tightly around it.

            She felt him before she heard him, the reassuring radiance of him that she'd come to recognize, and in her own recognition, fear.  She feared dependence.

            "Tell me they have somewhere else to crash," she said in a broken voice.  "Tell me they have somewhere else to go."

            Remus jerked a little; he hadn't realized she knew he was behind her.  But he stepped forward, starting to stroke a hand down her hair and thinking better of it as voices tangled in his head.

            _This is messed up, _her voice, both amused and strained, afraid and assured.

            _Do you really fancy yourself in love with her?  _The man who had gone bravely to face those whom he had betrayed spoke in his brain, snide for reasons Remus could entirely understand.

            Then she turned, her eyes wide and dark, full of emotion and focused on his, the question still echoing in them.

            "Yes," he said.  "They all have places to go.  They don't have to stay here."

            She couldn't stop the desperate relief that flooded through her, but she shook her head.  "I'm sorry.  It's selfish of me to ask that of you.  Of them."

            "There's nothing they can do," he said.  "Their presence here does nothing but heighten anxiety."  So saying, he looked up at the people gathered.  And as he began to speak, Dea slipped upstairs, feeling the weight bearing down on her shoulders.

            If they failed, it was on her head.  It had been her idea, and they had gone.

            If they failed, their blood would be on her hands, on the brain she'd used with hubris.

            If they failed, how much good would she be in the ensuing battle?

~~~

            When everyone was finally gone after offering advice, apologies, comfort for things that had not yet happened, conversation, and speculation, he went looking for her.

            He heard her before he saw her, the sobs just loud enough to be heard, and his heart twisted in his chest as he thought of a young woman nearly running down a Hogwarts hallway, her trunk dragging behind her as she cried.

            He found her in the room she'd awoke in, Great Aunt Dora gazing down at her with pity evident in her painted eyes, clucking her tongue loudly as she shook her head from side to side.  She lay on her side, facing the wall, hands pressed to her forehead.

            "Amadea, it's all right."  She didn't look up at his voice, but took in a hiss of air between her teeth, silencing her own misery.  He sat down beside her, finally giving in to the urge he'd had earlier, and stroked his hand over her hair, letting his fingers trace the bright white streak that inevitably drew the eye.  

            She turned her head so that his palm lay along her cheek.  "I sent them to their deaths," she said, her voice slightly hollow.  "Why did you all let me do this?"

            "We let you go to Malfoy," he reminded her.  "And this was bound to happen, Amadea, sooner or later, whether it had been your idea or not."

            She turned away from him again, hating the pity in those large, expressive eyes, hating the understanding.  Hating the patience she saw in his eyes that she didn't even have for herself.  "It was my idea, and an idea I'm too weak, magically, to even take part in."

            "You need rest," he said insistently, noting the slight bruises that had appeared under her eyes.  How hard had it been on her, to send away a mentor, a child, and the man she had once loved?

            _Or still loves, _he told himself cynically.  _Who's to say she doesn't?_

She stayed turned away from him, but she raised a hand to tangle with his, still resting gently on her hair.  Squeezing her eyes shut and feeling the tears slide down toward the pillow, she pulled on his hand until his was forced to lean down.  

            "Stay, okay?" she asked, letting out a hitching sigh.  "At least until I sleep."

            She'd sent away two of the few people left from her past, and she wouldn't push away the last one who remained.  She cradled his hand close to her, and when she felt his weight press evenly along the mattress, taller than her, longer than her, she let herself drift off.

~~~

            They did not speak as they walked in the night air, each of them preoccupied with their own thoughts, each of them preoccupied with their most precious memories, the ones they'd each held in reserve.

            Harry thought of his mother, the dim flashes he'd been granted in photographs, split memories, other people's descriptions.

            Severus thought of Dea as she had been, vivacious and completely uncaring of the reputation he'd had, the chip on his shoulder.

            Dumbledore thought of his own mother, a woman so formidable none dared cross her path.  She was a Squib, but she was far from powerless.  He remembered a woman with long knitting needles and a longer store of patience, the woman who had knitted socks for her son year after year as he outgrew them.  

            He had never outgrown his love for her.

            "Stop."  Severus's voice was insistent, and he stood with his eyes turned to the sky.

            "We haven't even been walking for an hour," Harry said, trying hard to keep the petulance out of his voice.  With every step he took, the fear grew deeper and deeper, and with it, his moods swung wildly.

            "This is true," Dumbledore said, looking up at the sky, as well.  "But Harry, distances here are not always as distances in the Muggle world.  Many places, like Hogwarts, are bewitched in certain ways, changed in ways we cannot see.  Severus is leading us to Voldemort, and he says we shall stop for the evening."

            With a flick of his wand, he withdrew a small square of cloth from his robe.  When he let it go, it sprung into a large tent that blended into the woods behind it.  

            "Perfect spot," Dumbledore said.  "Excellent choice, Severus."  And with that, he stepped inside and left the student and professor eyeing each other warily outside the tent.  

~~~

            She slept fitfully, which was unusual for her.  She dreamt of what could happen, and dreamt that it already had.  She dreamt of the past, the future, and what she feared was the present.  She talked in her sleep, cried out and just plain cried.

            She woke the man who had fallen asleep holding her.

            Remus eased out of the spoon position they'd been nestled in, feeling his cheeks burning in the dark.  Gripping her shoulder gently, he rolled her to her back and brushed her hair back from his face.

            "Wake up, Amadea, it's just a dream."  But was it, really?  It seemed she had so many bad memories she could relive.  He whispered her name once more and, thinking of any quick way to comfort, pressed a chaste kiss on her forehead.

            Her eyes flew open, unreadable inky pools in the dark, and she shot a hand up to touch his face.  She traced her fingers over the lines at the corners of his eyes, then let her hand slip back to touch the featherweight of his hair.  Finally, she settled for laying her palm along the hollow of his cheek, looking at the angles of his face in the moonlight.  It suited him perfectly, the bluish-white lunar light lending mystery to melancholy.  

            "This is messed up," she whispered, and suddenly she was desperate for human contact, desperate for what she'd been unable to handle earlier.  She levered herself, up, bringing their faces close, and slid her lips over his, keeping her eyes open to watch the expression in his eyes.

            They widened first, then drooped a bit as he kissed her back, pain shooting through him at the contact.  It had been so long, so long since anyone had bothered to touch him, and he feared the worst from Amadea.  He feared she'd sent her affections away and left only a woman with hunger, a woman with itches to be scratched.

            But then she leaned back, breaking the kiss, and trailed her hands over the side of his face, his cheek and his nose.  "You were bleeding," she whispered.  "Bleeding over all that beautiful fur."  She pressed her lips to the spot and spoke, her lips moving against his skin.  "And you frightened me."

            He trapped her hand in his, feeling his fingers trembling violently.  _Not here, not now, this isn't the way to be doing this, he told himself firmly.  __You're both upset.  The rational man may have been correct, but in a world of magic, rationale rarely ever had a place anyway.  "Do I frighten you now, Amadea?"_

            She hesitated only for a moment, then nodded.  "I'm scared of everything right now, Remus."  So she leaned up again, kissed him more firmly, and threaded her hands through his hair, gripping it hard enough to make him wince.  

            She slid her lips down to cover the pulse in his neck, and as heat raced through them, unsuited to the situation, to the time and place, Remus's eyes clouded and he looked out the window at the half-moon in the sky.  


	17. Things not understood

            He awoke before she did, his body stretched long over the bed, pressed limb-to-limb with hers, heat radiating off both of them despite the fact that their clothes were on the floor.

            Noting that particular part of the situation, Remus Lupin blushed.

            It had been hard— no, impossible— to find shame within the realm of the evening's heat, the need for contact.  He refused to see it as anything more than that, at least on her part.  She'd been in need, and he'd been there.

            He wouldn't make it any more than that.

            But before he removed his arms from around her body, before he slipped out of bed and into the robe she'd all but made for him, he pressed a kiss to her temple.

            After all, she wouldn't know about that.

            He'd made it into his clothes and nearly out the door when her voice stopped him.

            "You didn't strike me as the type to sneak out in the morning.  At the very least, I'd have pegged you for a note-on-the-pillow kind of guy."  

            It stung, but she'd be damned if she admitted it.  It had been her way to leave, her way to sneak out in the middle of the night from the few encounters she'd allowed herself back in the states.  In those days, it was either sneak out or be snuck away from.

            But somewhere in the middle of things, perhaps even in the middle of a dark, dewy night with an injured wolf and an orange wand, things had gotten a great deal more complicated than taking what was needed and leaving before sunrise.

            "You need your rest," he said lamely, trying not to feel guilty.  He turned and looked at her and felt his heart bump hard in his chest.  

            _What a fool I am, _he thought.  She was sitting up, sheet tucked under her arms, her hair tucked tight behind her ears.  And she looked, he thought, none too pleased.

            "Thanks for your concern, but I'll be the judge of what I need, Remus," Dea retorted, trying to keep the tone light, jesting. What matter was it to her if the man wanted to finish out the night in his own bed?

            He stiffened at her comment. "Yes, Amadea, I'll imagine you will be." His voice was weary, and he fought the wave of pure, bilious jealousy that washed over him. 

            Envy directed at a man who wasn't even there to face it.  It was, Remus thought, nearly farcical.

            If jealousy was Remus's chosen poison for the moment, guilt was Dea's.  How many other evenings had started exactly as the last one had?  How many times had she reached out for contact because she felt she needed it?  If the evening before had been just that-- a need easily remedied-- it wouldn't have been the first time. But it had been more than that, and the possibility that he had grounds to think otherwise shamed her.

            How wrong, how terribly wrong, had it been to find joy when others, others they had sent out, were finding nothing but fear, and perhaps even death?

            She had no time to contemplate it, for her face creased in obvious misery and he was back across the room in a few large strides, his hands on the sides of her face.  It didn't matter what his thoughts were of the evening before, where he thought her heart rested on the matter, he couldn't leave her pained.

            He couldn't pretend not to care, not when things were so touch-and-go.  Pretenses had no place here.  

            "What was last night, Amadea?" he asked, brushing his thumbs over the tender skin below her eyes.  He knew it was masochistic to ask, but he couldn't stop himself.

            She smiled then, a slight quirk of the lips that didn't quite reach her eyes.  "Can't really explain what I don't understand," she said, putting her hands over his and drawing them away from her face.  "So when I learn trigonometry, I'll teach it to you."

            His brow furrowed and she laughed, squeezing his hands.  "Would it be fair for me to tell you what it was when I know?"

            The door slammed downstairs, making them both jump, and he headed for the door once again.  But he stopped with his hand on the knob, and spoke without turning.  "I suppose that would be fair."

~~~

            "We didn't feel like staying at Hogwarts."  She sounded apologetic, and one of her shoes was steadily scraping the floorboards behind her.  She kept her head down so her curly hair partly obscured her eyes, a position she rarely took.

            If Remus had to guess, he would have said Hermione Granger was really and truly frightened.

            Ron stood beside her, his face pale under his freckles, but he stayed close enough to her that they were nearly touching, each of them taking comfort from the familiarity of the other.  The trio had been split, and Remus could clearly remember what it had been like when his own had started to break away—when James had died, that was bad enough, but Sirius and Peter had been taken, as well.           

            Remus sincerely hoped the trio would reunite, and soon.

            "That's quite all right, Hermione."  Remus conjured a couch for the two youths and, as an afterthought, called a few book from his own library upstairs.  "The two of you can sit, relax.  I'm sure Amadea won't mind making a room up for each of you once she's up and about."  He started to talk toward the kitchen, then turned back.  "Hungry?"

            Ron, of course, nodded nearly frantically, and Remus left to fix them all breakfast.

            "Hey… d'you notice that?" Ron asked, glad to have something else to think about, something other than his best friend.  

            Hermione looked up quickly, her eyes wide and skittish.  "Hmm?  What, Ron?"

            "D'you notice how it is?  Everyone left last night and left Lupin and the Yank upstairs, and now Lupin's cooking and she'll make us up a room?  It's like a cozy little married couple."

            "Ronald Weasley!" Hermione's brows drew together with the shocked half-whisper.  "That's so presumptuous, it's disrespectful!"

            "I was only sayin'," he said petulantly, rolling his eyes.  But the thought was easily forgotten when he smelled the food cooking in the kitchen.  

~~~

            Though it was something she only cared to do rarely, Hermione was forced to admit that Ron was right.

            There was at least _some sort of vibe passing between the two permanent residents of the Black house, and Hermione you didn't have to be a full-fledged adult, much less a rocket scientist, to figure it out._

            Breakfast was nearly completely silent, with token few efforts made at conversation.  But that didn't change glances thrown across the table, messages that didn't need words.

            When Remus wasn't looking at Dea, she was looking at him.

            But when Hermione wasn't watching Dea watching Remus, she was watching Ron eat with a curiosity that bordered on oddity.

            _Someone's starting to realize the world's not all about chums and pals, _Dea thought, but the small smile on her face slipped away when she looked down at the cup in front of her.  

            Sometime during the meal, he'd manage to conjure her a nearly perfect cappuccino.

            Heaving a sigh, she briefly narrowed her eyes at Remus, then addressed Hermione directly.  "You didn't happen to study any trigonometry at your Muggle school, did you, Hermione?"

            And when the two women started talking about Muggle education, the two men watched them.

            In the back of each of their minds lurked a different trio, not of lighthearted young people, but of heavy-hearted men with heavy burdens.  Miles away, the trio drew closer and closer to their destinies. 

~~~

            "It has been too long since he has summoned us."  The voice was nearly indistinct from the speaker's place in the corner of Lucius Malfoy's study, but the feeling was evident.  The Death Eaters were not so accustomed to being so unfettered.  Over time, the meetings with the Dark Lord had become addictive, something they felt they must do.

            In truth, many of them had simply stopped thinking for themselves.

            Lucius Malfoy was not one of those many.

            "He has given us a task, ingrate.  A task which we have not yet completed, and should it wait much longer, I am sure he will become displeased."  At the thought of the Dark Lord's displeasure and certain retribution, Lucius let a shudder thrill through his spine.  

            The idea of pain was never a bad one, as long as it was someone else's, and in this case, he intended to insure that it was.

            "What about Snape?  Surely he will be able to get close to her if she is allied with Dumbledore."  Another voice, more distinct, sharp like an insect's buzz, joined the informal meeting.  

             "That is a worry of mine," Malfoy admitted with an air of negligence.  "One I have not yet addressed with our Dark Lord.  I feel that our dear Potions Master will have soon outlived his usefulness.  His position as a spy makes him unable to participate in any large action we take, and so we lose more and more willing warriors, loyal crusaders, to luck, to blind chance.  He is a liability."

            _And, _Malfoy thought, _my place as most loyal, as longest-serving, is second only to him.  _Only a fool would not think of his own interests, even in a greater cause. 

            Lucius Malfoy's best interests meant destroying everyone in his way, but the Middlemarch spawn had to go first.

            It was time to do serious hunting.


	18. Arrivals, Discoveries, and Missions

            "Though doubtless neither of you will be overjoyed to hear as such, we grow near."  Severus spoke from the head of the group, not turning to look at his cohorts.  Dumbledore had kept up idle chatter for the majority of the journey, and though Severus was loathe to admit it, it had served its purpose and taken their minds off matters more grave.

            But he knew they were getting close, and that the two others should be warned.  He thought it odd he hadn't been summoned for a gathering of the Death Eaters, but he knew the reason why.  There would be no meetings as long as they were hunting Dea, as long as they were trying to kill her.  She was a variable they did not understand, and so she had to be snuffed out.

            Severus wondered how long it would take them to come to the same conclusion about him, for he had seen glimmers in their minds, glimmers of mistrust similar to ones he saw in the minds of the Order members.

            _Once a misfit, _he thought bitterly to himself.

            He had spent most of the trip worrying, not about himself or the men he was with; he knew they were capable, though it frightened him to think of Potter as such.  They were capable, and they had volunteered for the job, had agreed to it knowing full well what they were going into.

            He was worried about Dea, and about the security of the Black house.  It would only hold so long under a group of determined black magicians, and even Malfoy alone would more likely than not be able to find her.

            She was, after all, blood kin to the man.  And blood found blood, more often than not.

            "We need to hurry," he said definitely, increasing his pace.

            "Oh yeah, sooner the better," Harry said, but he felt his pulse quicken, and not all of it was fear.  Adrenaline was starting to kick in, making the whole thing seem a little more exciting than it actually was.

            "The sooner the better," Dumbledore agreed, and behind his glasses, his kind eyes hardened.

~~~

            He had found something.

            He had found it in a corner of his mansion, scenting it out like the animal that he was, sensing the addition where before there had been none.  It had a magical scent to it, like ozone and light and static.  It was the smell of magic going bad, of a spell losing its grip.  

            Lucius Malfoy twirled the single orange feather between his thumb and forefinger and sneered at the bright, impertinent color of it.  Orange, in a Malfoy mansion?  Ridiculous.  But the small amount of light it was radiating, the smell, was enough to excite him.

            He had part of her, a part that had undoubtedly come floating to the stone floor when he'd struck her.  He felt a tightening in his loins at the thought of her pain and palmed the feather like a stage magician with a handkerchief.

            With his other hand, he snapped thrice and held his arm aloft.  A hawk perched on his arm, eyes glinting with nothing short of malice, only slighter saner than its owner.  Making the feather shuttle over his long, cold fingers, he passed it in front of the hawk's eyes. 

            "Do us a favor, Ferreus.  Find your fellow feathered friend."  He brought his eyes down to the glittering yellow eyes of the bird and let his long nose rub its beak.  "Find her, find her, find her."  He threw out his arm suddenly, sending the bird into flight and out the window.

            "How I do love a hunt," he said in a sing-songing voice. 

            Draco had seen nearly enough—after all, it wasn't uncommon to find his father talking to objects, or treating his damned dark animals like favored children.  "Father, Mother wishes to see you.  She told me to—"

            "Your mother tells you nothing.  I tell you everything."  Lucius whirled on his son, eyes already rolling in derision.  "I tell you everything," he repeated, and his eyes narrowed.  "And you should tell me everything."

            "Yes, Father," Draco replied mechanically.  

            "And in the spirit of such, tell me, have you seen anyone around the school?  A woman, with a white streak in her hair?  A woman who looked as though she should be dead?  A tiny, feathered fiend come to muck things up?"

            Draco bit back a sigh.  The old man really was going batty.  Soon, Draco thought, he wouldn't even be properly able to pursue his pet hobby—being a Death Eater.  The more time wore on, the more Draco was convinced he didn't care about the bloody battle between good and evil—he'd find power his own way. 

            But for the moment, he had to appease the beast.

            "No, Father."  And as the hawk shrieked from a distance, Draco winced.

~~~

            This time, this night, she came to him.  He had spent the day trying to pretend as though nothing had happened, and though she didn't necessarily agree with it, Dea was too smart to pretend she didn't know at least some of Remus's mindset.

            Men, no matter what their motivation, how old they were, how intelligent, did not like to share.  And though she felt the two halves of her were split cleanly in two—before her parents' death and after it, with a nice spot of nothingness in between—she could hardly say there were not residual feelings from that other life.  But Severus was gone to her, and had been even before her return.

            So she went to Remus's bedroom, her knock firm but quiet in deference to the adolescents sleeping down the hall, and when he bade her enter, she did so and shut the door  behind her.

            He was sitting by his bed, reading a book, the small glasses on once again.  When she came in, however, he closed the book and set it aside, making sure to keep his hands busy, his eyes away from hers.  Want, it seemed, had not diminished with the previous evening, but had grown.

            That, he thought, was quite a predicament.

            "We couldn't have been together, you know."  She stated it quietly, watching his eyes grow wide as they flew to hers, hurt flashing perceptibly in the gentle green.  "Severus and I," she elaborated.

            When he said nothing, only looked away from her again, she huffed out a breath and sat on the side of his bed, propping her feet on the chair he sat in.  "Listen to me," she insisted, shoving hard enough with her feet to make his chair move.  "Damn it, Remus, I'm not going to beat around the bush in an effort not to offend your precious sensibilities.  Listen to me!"

            "I've no other choice," he fired back, raising his eyes to hers.  How could he be cowardly over such a thing as this?  Cowardly when bravery was clearly the order of the day?

            "We couldn't have been together.  There are too many things—too many things painful for him and too many painful for me—that would prevent that.  And I stopped wanting that, Remus, long ago."  She reached out and brushed a hand over his cheek.

            He let his eyes drop to her hand, resting lightly on his cheek, then looked her in the eye again.  "You don't have to tell me that, Amadea.  I didn't ask for a confession."

            "It's your business now," she replied.  "I just wanted you to know."

            "Then I suppose I should say thank you," he replied quietly.  He believed her—at least most of him did; it was difficult to kill jealousy in one fell swoop—but it didn't change other things.

            The fact that he was, in fact, in love with her.  That was unaltered, only shored up by the last day's events.  And the fact that he was most certain she felt not the same for him.

            That, too, was unaltered.

            But when she leaned down to replace fingers with lips, kissing him lightly on the cheek, laying her cheek to his, he could ignore those facts.

            And as they moved from bedside to bed, neither of them heard the hawk in the distance.


	19. Tumbling

****Author's Note: All my apologies for the random spelling errors here and there—I'll admit, once I'm done with something, it's rare that I read back over it.  I usually just let it go and continue on, intending to come back later and read over it.  So… I'm not an idiot, only a bit careless.  Happy reading****

            _"I see you…" _

            The voice whispered in her brain, drilled through the cottony swathes that sleep had cut across her mind, across her consciousness.  

            _"Onesies, twosies, threesies-three, I see a birdie in a tree…"_

She awoke without moving, her eyes opening wide in the dark room.  She inched her hand out, breathing a sigh of relief when her fingers tangled with Remus's.  No matter how ridiculous it was, the last thing she wanted was to be alone.  She'd spent many years taking care of herself, looking out for herself, and though she was unaccustomed to being dependent, it was hard to avoid.

            He did not wake, but his fingers curled around hers slowly, lending their heat and strength even in rest.

            Dea shivered, hearing the voice in her memory, fading but persistent.  Whose was it?  Turning in, watching Remus's chest rise and fall steadily in the wavering moonlight, she allowed herself to fall back asleep.

            And outside, yellow eyes watched sleeping crusaders, ready to report back to a master.

~~~

            It looked different.

            It looked so different upon approaching it by foot.  Smaller, shabbier, more nondescript.  Though it was undoubtedly an intentional disguise chosen by Voldemort himself, Severus thought it probably did a bit for Harry's self-confidence, and so he said nothing. 

            He normally Apparated just outside the small house's doors, and Disapparated as soon as he had stepped out of them, eager to wash off the filth accumulated simply by being inside.  But as he led his companions up to the door, he felt sick to his stomach.

            His mouth tensing, he held up one long, slim finger.  "He knows," he whispered, the wind whipping the black cloth around his feet and strands of hair around his face.  He turned eyes, wide and stark, to the two men with him.  

            "Yes, he knows," Dumbledore agreed, stepping slightly in front of Harry and staring intently at the front door of the cottage.

            It blew outward, and without any warning, Severus was on his knees, his mouth contorted in silent pain.  Shadows lurked in shadows beyond the gaping mouth of the doorway, and from those shadows a voice called out.

            "Judas," it said hissingly, but its tone was more amused than anything else.  "Oh, my beloved Judas.  You set out to betray me but instead you brought my quarry to me."  

            An anguished cry tore itself from Harry's throat and he staggered, digging his fingernails into the skin of his forehead as though trying to rip out whatever writhed beneath the surface.

            The black-hooded fiend flew from the shadows like a bat, the frog-belly white of his face flashing only briefly as he darted toward Severus.  He moved quickly, but seemed reluctant to approach Dumbledore.  "Such a sweet situation, Severus."  He dipped his head like a cobra and Severus's back arched, the fingers of his left hand drumming into the ground.  The Dark Mark on his arm grew red-hot, and the robes covering it burst into flames.

            But still the Potions master did not cry out.

            "Do something!" Harry howled, but Dumbledore held out a restraining hand, watching carefully as Voldemort picked which of the three he'd like to take on and effectively ignored the other two.

            "Do you know they're killing her right now, Severus?" Voldemort hissed, and light burst from his wand, vile and mold-colored.  But Harry, looking through scalding, pain-wrought tears, saw something amazing.

            He saw Severus raise a twitching right hand and draw a memory from himself bare-handed, drawing it over him like a cloak, and Voldemort screeched, wheeling backward quickly.

            "You!" he screamed at Harry, pointing the wand at the boy who was no longer cowering.  "You and your foolish mortal emotions and mortal notions."

            With a scream so high-pitched it was nearly inaudible, Harry shook his head, the scar on his forehead sending bolts of pure heat and hate into his brain.  His wand arm shot out blindly, a blue-silver jet of light coming from it.  Voldemort advanced as though unperturbed.

            "Your Patronus does nothing to me, Potter."  And then the bolt hit him mid-chest, not a Patronus at all but a memory, pure and strong, of Lily rocking her baby boy to sleep and singing.

            "Horrible wench!" Voldemort screamed, shaking as though trying to rid himself of the memory that clung to him. 

            "Tom, it is far past time you gave up.  There are too many who do not believe as you do."  Dumbledore, looking older and sounding younger, leveled his wand on the writhing thing in front of him and shook his head sadly.

            With a hiss, the physical form of Voldemort dissipated, and Harry felt again the presence that had invaded him in the Ministry, the presence of pure evil pulsing inside him.  This time, however, instead of standing down, Dumbledore pointed his wand straight at Harry's head.

            "Do it!" Voldemort screeched triumphantly from Harry's mouth.  "Do it, do it, do it, old man!"

            And Dumbledore muttered a single word under his breath, his hand steady as he sent his power straight at Harry.

~~~

            A bird perched in Remus's window, its normally silent demeanor gone, replaced by a more insistent one.  It was clearly a bird with a mission.  It flew into the room and, perching on the foot of the bed, sunk its beak into the fleshy bottom of Remus's foot.

            "Ow, dammit!" he yelled, jerking his foot back.  "What are you doing in here, Buck—"  But it was not Buckbeak who had bitten his foot, Remus could see.

            It was Fawkes.

            The brilliant bird leaned its head down, then flew to the window and looked to the north.

            To the north, where the three travelers had headed.  

            When Fawkes turned back to Remus and an awakening Dea, tears glimmered in the bird's eyes.  

            "They're there," Remus said wonderingly, pressing the heels of his hands to his eyes and wishing, for a moment, that he did not know that particular fact, that the bird hadn't come like some macabre messenger of ill.  He turned to the woman who had shared the night with him, looking more tired and older than he had when he'd fallen asleep.  "Amadea, they're there."

            "I know," she said simply, and she couldn't keep from picturing a straggly young boy holding a brilliant, smooth bowl of green.


	20. Vigilant

            "Albus, no," Severus whispered from his spot on the ground, his voice nearly gone, his face bathed in a cold, pained sweat.  Every other moment he would shudder so violently his teeth chattered as the pain coursed through him.  The skin on his arm was cracked and bleeding, burns beyond which he'd ever experienced coursing the length of it.  He'd bitten his tongue several times, frothing blood around his mouth, and a long, deep gash had been opened on the side of his face.

            But Dumbledore, either ignoring or not hearing Severus, kept his eyes trained on Harry as the memories flowed one after the other out of his wand and into Harry's head.  Before Voldemort could realize what was being flung at him, before he could leave the boy's body, he was bombarded with memories of love, the love of people who had died standing against him, the love of some people still standing.  

            Harry stood still, feeling as though one divided.  Control warred with mayhem as he shared his body with another, knowing one or both of them would not leave alive.  And as he had in the Ministry, he wished Dumbledore would just finish him off, and then it would be over—over and he could be with Sirius and away from the troubles—

            But a memory of Sirius washed over him and Harry clenched his fists in the little movement he could muster.  

            Inside him, Voldemort shrieked deafeningly and tried to leave, tried to exit the boy and all his hateful memories—

            And Harry held onto him.  

            It was a simple enough trick, Harry thought, rather like trying to remember what you needed at market.  You just had to concentrate, and so he concentrated with all his might, feeling his cells cling to the foreign substance that had invaded them like a mob seizing a criminal.

            _Stay here and take it, you filthy thing, _Harry thought triumphantly, and clearly saw an old woman knitting socks when a pile of them already stood by her chair, tumbling over one another.

            And then the monster was expelled from his body, flinging Harry to the ground and leaving him wrung out.  He inched his fingers toward his wand, intent on using the memories he'd been given, and found he hadn't the strength to grasp it.  Incomprehensibly tired, he stared at a patch of grass directly beneath his nose and felt his eyes slip shut.

            _No, wake up, I have to help—_

            Voldemort struggled, once again inside his own body, but weakened by the memories he'd been forced to absorb, to view.  He stood against Dumbledore, grinning with his slit of a mouth, red eyes glowing like twin furnaces.  "Two of your fools are now down, Dumbledore.  What say you now?"  He stood against the powerful wizard and the two began to duel.

            "Mine," Severus insisted, and no one could hear him.  _Mine, mine, mine, he's been mine from the beginning.  _And as he thought so, his lips peeled back from his teeth in a grimace of pain and determination.  Blood seeped from his nose, caking around his mouth, and a thin trickle had started at the corner of his lips.  _I'm already damned, so let it be, _he thought, and raised his wand for what he was sure was the last time.  

~~~

            She tried to concentrate on little things, on small tasks and busy work, on keeping Ron and Hermione blissfully ignorant of what was going on.  She smiled her way through most of breakfast, and it wasn't until she was washing up that things started to crumble.

            A particularly stubborn bit of potato clung to Ron's plate, and Dea scrubbed at it for several minutes before trying her hand with her wand.  "Clean, damn you," she muttered, prodding it with the tip of her wand.  "_Scourgify!"_

"Let me help you with that," Hermione said uneasily, throwing a glance at Ron and Remus.  Men were so bloody foolish, she thought, that they couldn't ever see when what a female needed was a little help.

            "It's fine," Dea said, the brightness in her voice turning brittle and edgy.  "It's fine, it'll all be fine."  Then her voice broke and the dish slipped from her hands, only to be caught neatly in Hermione's.  "Oh, God," she said, putting her hands to her face and ignoring the fact that they were covered in soap.  "Oh, God, Remus, what if they're hurt?"  _What if _he's _hurt, _she couldn't help thinking.  Love was love, no matter if it was only friendly.

            Too many loved ones had died.

            Remus stood quickly, knocking the bottom of the table with his knees awkwardly, and stepped to the sink to place a hand on each of her shoulders, for once unmindful of the watchful eyes around him.  But it was not a time for lies, and not a time for coddling.  "That's a risk they knew, Amadea."

            "Bloody hell!" Ron spat out suddenly, shoving away from the table so hard he tipped his chair over and had to clamber out from under it.

            "Honestly, Ron," Hermione hissed, cutting her eyes to the embracing couple before them.  It was as though the idiot couldn't display any sense at all.

            "N-no, you don't understand," he said, pointing a shaky hand out the window.  "It's Malfoy!"

            That captured Dea's attention as the dishes had been unable to, and her head snapped quickly to side, her eyes focusing out the window.

            Lucius Malfoy stood behind Number 12 Grimmauld Place, muttering to himself and staring at the house.  Or rather, right through the house.  It was clear to Dea that he couldn't see a thing, but that he was searching intently.

            "He knows," Remus said grimly, thrusting Dea behind him unthinkingly.  "He knows there's supposed to be something here."

            "He just doesn't know what," Hermione said wonderingly, stepping closer to the window.  "And so he can't see it."

            "We have to go."  Remus turned, stone-faced, and gave Dea a push.  "Go, Amadea.  Get your things.  We're leaving.  You, as well, Ron, Hermione."

            But Dea didn't budge.  "I'm not going," she said firmly.  "I'm not going until they're back."

            "That could be weeks, if ever," Hermione said realistically, though the admission made her heart sink.

            "Take them to Hogwarts," the American witch responded, turning her eyes back to the window, unable to look at the fear and worry in everyone else's faces.  "I'm staying here.  They'll need me when they get back."

            "He's looking for you," Remus insisted, his voice growing both deeper and louder.  "He's looking for you because you baited him, that was your idea.  Do you insist on putting yourself further in harm's way?"

            "Yes," she said.  When she faced them, all three of them staring at her dubiously, her eyes blazed with a fire she'd banked long ago.  "I came here for a reason.  I enlisted, as it were, in this cause for a reason, and it wasn't to be with you, Remus.  It wasn't to be safe, it wasn't to be cared for.  It was to help.  It was to put myself in harm's way.  This is the time for that, for me."  When she saw his eyes darken, the corners of his mouth drawn and his shoulders stooped, she stepped to him and laid a hand on his shoulder.  "There can be pleasant outcomes of unpleasant situations."  

            "I won't stay away," he said wearily, knowing he couldn't argue with her.  

            "I didn't think you would."  And for that, she was glad, for when the warriors returned from their battle, she didn't want to go it alone.  She turned to the two students.  "You'll go back to Hogwarts," she said.  "I know you want to stay here, but—"

            "We'll be in the way," Ron said, surprising Hermione with his uncharacteristic insightfulness.  When he saw her wide-eyed look, he shrugged uncomfortably.  "What?  No use pussyfootin' around it, right?"

            "Good luck," Hermione said to Dea, feeling that her words were ineffectual and weak.  

            Dea's mouth quirked at the well-wishing.  "I'll certainly need it, as I lack your talents.  Thanks again for all the help.  Stupid American girl and all that—we don't read over there, we listen to audio books."

            And so, when Lucius had wandered away in temporary defeat, she sent them away with Remus, the smile playing about her lips turning grim and combative.  "All right, Luscious Lucius," she whispered nastily, standing watch at the back window and rubbing her hands together.  "Let's see how long it takes you to win 'find the birdie.'"

~~~

            As though he sensed Snape's actions, and it was likely he did, Voldemort turned and started to shriek in that horrible, hissing cicada voice.  "_Cruc—"  But he never got the rest of the painful Unforgivable out.  Dumbledore slammed him with a memory, large and pulsing, the silver of it multi-hued and glistening like the outside of a soap bubble, and he stumbled back._

            "_Avada kedavra," _Severus said, his voice low and impossibly steady as he thrust his wand at Voldemort.  He could feel it climbing out his body and up his arm like lightning charge and he clamped his teeth down.  "_Avada kedavra, you… fucking… snake."  And with a gasp, the curse let loose in a blare of green light, sending Severus's hair in all directions, his eyes rolling back in his head as a small ball of green light ripped from him, tinged with silver memories that had remained in his wand, and slammed into Voldemort.  _

            The red of the Dark Lord's eyes flashed to a bright, acidic green, but his unbelievable strength battled with the curse.  The end result was only a weakening, and Severus felt devoid of the fear he knew he should feel.

            In his mind, he deserved whatever came to him.  He'd spent years under the control of this man, doing ill upon others, helping to make decisions that brought about death, mayhem, and destruction.  

            He had been evil, and he had been willingly so.  But once again, the headmaster drew Voldemort away.

            "Come, Tom, let us duel together," Dumbledore said pleasantly, feeling sick at heart.  Such a bright boy, reduced to no more than a thing.  "Don't you find that more of a challenge?"  Then a thought, bell-clear and wonderously bright, slipped into his head.  Not a thought of his own, but a thought of a fellow crusader.

            _It has to be me, _Harry's voice spoke in his head, and Dumbledore dared not to turn and see if the boy had risen.  _That's fate, right?  It has to be me._

And as Voldemort pointed his wand to demolish the old wizard, Harry's voice sounded calmly behind him.  

            "Constant vigilance," he said, and when Voldemort wheeled to face him, he shouted with the might of a boy whose parents were killed, who felt the pain every year without realizing he was stockpiling it for a moment just like this, who had waited for revenge so quietly that not even he knew he'd been waiting for it.

            Now he wanted to see what it tasted like.

            "_Avada kedavra!" _he shouted, unintentionally mimicking Severus's inflection and pronunciation down to the letter.  

            In a matter of moments, he'd taught Harry the only Defense Against the Dark Arts that would really matter.


	21. Sometimes all you need

            He was back before nightfall, his eyes large and worried, and she could see that he would be perfectly frank with the students gone.

            "You're no match for Malfoy."  They were his first words upon re-entering the headquarters, and she wondered briefly why no one could stop by and interrupt this particular exchange.              

            "You think I don't know that?" she asked, chuffing out a laugh.  "He could have me dancing at his whims before I could do so much as curl his hair."  And as she said it, she glanced out the window with a trace of apprehension.  When would he return?  And moreover, when would _they _return?  

            Or would they?

            Thrusting the ugly thought from her mind, she turned to face him, her lips uptilted in a wistful smile.  "You're the magic whiz.  Maybe you can give me a hand with Malfoy."  But his response was a grave shake of the head.  "What?"  

            "Amadea, the full moon is tomorrow night."  He closed his eyes, unable to look at her.  _Freak, he accused himself silently, letting himself remember all the names he'd been called, all the accusations that had been hurled at him over time.  It would strike him when he most needed to be alert.  When he most needed to protect her. _

            She recovered admirably, he had to give her credit for that.  "Well, then, we'll just have to hope he's afraid of dogs."  

~~~

            There was a moment of silence so complete that for a moment, Harry thought he had gone deaf.  And then, with a sound like the rending of cloth, Voldemort, He Who Must Not Be Named, he who had always been feared, he whose shadow had fallen over them all, changed.  Long, black magics fell away and the real picture emerged.

            The snakelike face rounded out into that of a haggard, once-handsome man, the cheeks sunken, the blank, staring eyes so deep-set that they appeared not to be there at all.  His hair was almost completely white, and sparse on his head.

            The terror of the magical world was dead by the hand of a boy.

            A long, low groan sounded from Severus, the first sound of pain and discomfort he had uttered since the beginning of the battle, and Harry stood perfectly still, his chest rising and falling in great gulps, his face streaming with a mixture of sweat and tears.  The scar on his forehead had faded nearly to invisibility.  

            Dumbledore's face was chalky and pale, but he was smiling, relief warring with grief as he looked upon the fallen man who had once been his student.  And as he heard the rattling gasp from Severus, his gaze shifted from the dead wizard to the professor who had more than shown his loyalty that day.

            "Come," Dumbledore said curtly to Harry, wishing he could spend more time on the boy but knowing that Severus was very near death.  Harry didn't hesitate at all as they surrounded the Potions Master and Disapparated, taking him with them.

~~~

            She wasn't selfish enough to try and command that the Order convene at the house only to protect her.  In her head, she knew there would be an outbreak, an uprising of the remaining Death Eaters who were not shivering cowards, and the Order had to remain in the positions to which Dumbledore had assigned them.

            She had drawn the platinum-maned beast onto herself, and she would take the consequences.  So firmly was her mind on those consequences, so vivid was her imagination on the things that would happen to her, she shrieked aloud when a series of loud pops permeated the kitchen, sending her hands flying to her ears.

            The first thing she saw was Harry, his brilliant green eyes aged but triumphant, and then Dumbledore, stooped over with the weight of something he was carrying.  Her heart turned over in her chest and she cried out without thinking as the men, young and old, laid Severus on the floor.  

            _He's dead, _she thought, turning the back of her hand to her mouth to try and stifle the scream that wanted to come.  But his eyelids fluttered and she was on the floor in an instant, her heart racing as though it would burst from her chest.  

            "Amadea!"  Remus burst through the doors of the kitchen, the multiple sounds of air displacement having triggered his imagination to the worst possible outcomes.  Dumbledore was in front of him, though, his long-fingered, spotted hand planted in the center of the werewolf's chest.  

            "Let us go from here, Remus.  She will need room in which to tend to him."  He could see the anguish in Remus's eyes, the sheer terror, and knew it was not only for Severus, but also for Amadea, for the tenuousness between them.  "Come."

            Harry followed sluggishly, casting a glance over his shoulder at the man on the floor and knowing that Snape had forever changed in his eyes, in his estimation.

            "We need to get Harry back to Hogwarts," Remus was saying urgently to Dumbledore as Harry followed them.  "Malfoy is closing in, Professor, it won't be long before—"

            "We can deal with Malfoy when he arrives," Dumbledore said dismissively, putting up a hand.  He was loathe to show any signs of weakness, but he was tired and sick at heart.  He needed rest.  "For now, Remus, I believe I shall put up my feet—" At this, he conjured a ridiculous plaid footstool, its edges decked in golden tassels that were emitting a light, soporific tinkling.  "—And take a bit of a break, if you don't mind."

            Remus bit his tongue against the objections that wanted to come as the elderly wizard's eyes drifted shut, and he saw from the corner of his eye that Harry had already curled on a couch, adrenaline gone in an ebb tide rush, completely drained.

            Seeing no other course of action, Remus sat down beside the couch where Harry slept, laid a comforting hand on the boy's head, and listened with careful ears to Amadea's voice drifting from inside the kitchen, phrase after phrase, spell after spell.

~~~  
            She very nearly didn't know where to start, and the only thing that kept her from choking on her tears was the knowledge that she would have to speak clearly in order for the spells to work.  She managed to _scourgify the blood from his face, starting there.  It was stupid, she knew, but if he looked better, she knew she could calm down._

            Taking a moment to stroke the hair away from his face, she let out a shuddering sigh and started with the gash laddering up his left cheek, healing it bit by bit to avoid scarring as much as possible.  No matter what the magic, it was still human skin, human flesh, and often needed to be treated slowly.

            After finishing that, she ignored the smaller cuts and scrapes on his face and probed her fingers over his ribs slowly.  She came to a large lump, and as her small fingers hit upon it, his eyes flew open and he captured her fingers in his with a ragged cough.

            "They… alive?"  His voice was naught but a whisper, the smoothness that had unnerved many a student replaced by a tremor and weakness.

            "Yes," she said, squeezing his fingers lightly.  "They're alive.  Everyone's fine but you, you fool."  She winced and closed her eyes, unable to control her emotions.  He slid back into unconsciousness and she couldn't help but be relieved as she healed his ribs and moved to the other side.

            She worked for hours, healing what she could see and trying to speculate as to what she couldn't, and in a moment of sheer exhaustion, she laid her head on the table beside Severus, one hand joined with his, and slept.


	22. Stay

            "We should move him upstairs."  The voice, soft and ever-gentle, woke her.  Albus stood over her, one hand planted in the snowy expanse of his beard as he leaned over to look at Severus.  

            She blinked at him, for a moment unable to string sense out of his words.  Then she felt the long, bony fingers laced with hers and stood up, shoving her hair out of her face.  "Oh, God, I fell asleep," she said in a rush, flitting her eyes up to Dumbledore's.  "There are still things wrong, still things I need to fix."

            Dumbledore held up a hand to calm her and shook his head slightly.  "Not before we move him upstairs to a bed, somewhere more conducive to recuperation."  It was a wonder, the headmaster thought, that the man was alive at all.  He'd been hit with the rage of one betrayed and had still lasted long enough to hurt Voldemort.  "_Mobilicorpus," _he said, and led the sleeping man up the stairs and into a bed.

            Dea moved to follow, making it only just outside the kitchen before she was stopped.  "You're not going up until you eat something," Remus said more firmly than he had intended.  He'd slept sitting up all night, and only in snatches, occasionally looking around the house to make sure Malfoy wasn't around.  He'd looked in on her several times, watching her sleep for long moments and wondering how, exactly, he'd come to think of her even when he was exhausted.

            He'd expected her to argue with him about breakfast, had expected a struggle, but instead she slipped her arms around him and laid her head to his chest, the small movement of trust surprising him.  "I'm so worried," she said, her words muffled against his chest.  "But I'm so glad they're back."

            Moving without thinking, he pressed his lips to the top of her head, the small sign of affection bringing a catchy sigh from her lips.  "Are you cooking?" she finally asked, pulling her head back to look him full in the eye.  His answer was a tired smile, but he linked his fingers with hers and went into the kitchen.  

            Outside, a hawk circled the house, screeching in frustration, stirring the air with its heavy wings.

~~~

            "The death of our Lord will not go unavenged."  His voice droned evenly over the assembled group, and they chanted his words back to him in monotone.

            _"The death of our Lord will not go unavenged."  _

            "The shape-shifting witch will be made an example."

            _"The shape-shifting witch will be made an example."_

"The boy will be sacrificed, the enemy of Voldemort for these long years will be vanquished."  Those words were repeated, as well, and Lucius Malfoy pulled off his mask and drew back his hood to howl the next words.

            "The traitor shall do our bidding.  Under our power, he will kill those around him and suffer even as he does so!"  He closed his eyes to better savor the rage coursing through his veins and whispered under his breath.  "I will find them.  I will find them and we will bring forth the Dark Lord's vision."

~~~

            She'd eaten only a bite of breakfast before thundering upstairs and taking her place at Severus's bedside, the Latin words flowing from her mouth as she directed her wand here and there.  By late afternoon, Dea had fixed nearly everything, down to the last bruise and scrape, but still he did not awake.  Downstairs she could hear the voices of Dumbledore and Harry and Remus.  Harry, she noted, sounded wonderful.  He sounded, for the first time since she'd met him, like a teenaged boy.  A great weight had been lifted, she warranted.  But as she glanced out the window at the barren lawn, she wondered if it had been truly lifted.  

            The loyal still roamed.

            On the bed, her patient coughed.  Her attention was drawn back to him immediately, eyes at first hopeful as she thought he was awake and then fearful as she saw what his coughing had brought.  Another trickle of blood wended its way down his chin and she whimpered under her breath.

            Internal bleeding.  While it was at least something you could pinpoint in Muggle medicine, she hadn't the slightest clue of what to do magically.  She could command healing all she wanted, but how was she to know where, exactly, the problem lay?  And if there was more than one problem, how was she supposed to know?

            "Oh, God," she said shakily, using both hands to push his hair back from his face, his skin looking too pale to her, his face looking too wrinkled.  She cleaned the blood from his mouth and chin with her hands, absently wiping them on her robes as trembles coursed through her, round after round, until she was shaking uncontrollably and crying.

            "Okay," she said, wiping away her tears and leaving traces of his blood on her cheeks.  "Okay.  If you're coughing it up, that means lungs, so… _sano pulmo."  _His breathing evened a little, but she wasn't satisfied.

            "I don't know, I don't know," she chanted to herself, her fingers flitting here and there over his abdomen, his chest.  "Albus!" she called, her voice raising.  "Albus!"

            The headmaster appeared after what seemed like an eternity with Remus in tow.  "Yes, Dea?" Dumbledore said pleasantly, laying a hand on her shoulder.

            "I don't know what to do," she said, wiping her hand over her face again, this time in exhaustion.  "I'm afraid there's things I can't see, things wrong that I don't know."

            "What do you mean?"  Remus asked, glancing down at the still-sleeping Severus.

            "Internal bleeding!" she burst out, shaking her head.  "His lungs were damaged, so other things could be, too.  His heart, his spleen.  Things could be lacerated and bleeding inside his body, I don't know—"  When they both merely looked at her, neither of them saying a word, she stood and shoved Dumbledore's hand from her shoulder, feeling the helplessness swamp her, smother her.  "What the hell is wrong with you people?" she screamed, not noticing that her volume was making Severus stir.  "Isn't there anyone in this realm who studies anything useful?  Simple anatomy?  God, it's as though you're all completely ignorant!" 

            "Typical Ravenclaw…"  The voice was steady but quiet.  "Thinks she knows… everything."  Severus didn't open his eyes but left them shut, tilting his head back and drawing in a long, thin breath through his nose.  He'd been in and out, each time seeing her next to him, over him.  He could feel a strong, piercing pain low in his side, one of many different pains Voldemort had thrust upon him.  The blinding, searing pain he recalled was mostly gone, but there was still the one, deep and true, and he knew it would be the most dangerous.  

            Tearing her wide eyes away from the two men in the doorway, Dea looked back at the now-conscious Severus.

            "Dea… I need…"  He broke off, his eyes flashing wide and then dropping closed again.

            Before he could finish his sentence, Harry burst through the door, his breath coming in great gulps.

            "He's here!" he exclaimed, his eyes fearful.  "Professor Dumbledore, what will happen if he finds us?"

            Not turning around, Dea placed her hands back over Severus, her face set in grim determination.  "Well, boys, this is it.  Looks like Luscious Lucius is about to join the party, lads.  Hope there's enough food for everyone."  And she started to mutter again, shooting in the dark to try and find the words to make him better.  

~~~

            _Haste._

            Dumbledore took the steps down two at a time, his robes slapping against the banisters in his hurry.  When Remus started to follow, however, the headmaster shook his head.  "Sunset is nearly upon us, Remus.  Take your potion.  You'll be of no help if you are trying to hurt both us and the enemy." And before Remus could say any more, Dumbledore leaned down, put his arms around Harry, and they both vanished.

            _Uselessness._

            Remus stood at the head of the stairs, his heart pounding double-time, his mind torn to scraps by the whirlwind of the past days, his heart long since numbed.  It was impossible not to see what was happening, that Amadea was so intent on fixing Severus that she'd destroy herself.

            And if Lucius Malfoy was coming, he would do just that—destroy her, and then where would he be?  The thought, though selfish, coursed through his brain as he knocked back the wolfsbane with a tinge of self-loathing.

            _Desperation._

She ran out of words, spreading her hands and the now-bloodstained orange wand over his chest, his back, his stomach and trying to heal everything, to make everything better even it had been fine in the first place.

            _Agony._

He jolted as her hand brushed over a tender spot, a spot that felt as though every nerve ending were raw and exposed, a spot that felt as though every pint of blood he had had been pumped there and nowhere else, pulsing ugly red and angry, and he grabbed her wrist, his eyes clouding and his mind reaching out for hers unintentionally, and he saw—

            He saw her back at Hogwarts crying as she ran down the hallway, saw her with her parents, first alive and then dead, saw her together with Remus, cheek-to-cheek, limb-to-limb, heart-to-heart—

            _Rage._

The bitch had to be here somewhere, the bitch and her pet wolf and her pet traitor and her pet boy, and it was all her fault, for it had been she who'd made a fool of the great Lucius Malfoy, and so it was her fault.  

            He'd spoken of her to the remaining Death Eaters, but it was he who wanted her.  He would take her down, and all the rest of them with her, and then he would be the most powerful.

            He could be the Dark Lord.

            He prowled the street, peering at the empty space in front of him, first down at the ground, then up at the hawk circling the darkening sky.

            Ten, eleven, tw—but there was no twelve, there was only thirteen.

            "Clever little bastards," he hissed, centering himself in the empty space.  "You hid Number 12, Grimmauld Place."

            The door materialized in front of him.

            _Pain._

"No!  Stop, Severus, please!"  Dea felt the slight probing, mind to mind, and for an instant she could see what he saw.  She muttered a few more healing words in desperation, in the hopes that it would make him release her.

            He did, but not before he saw, and in seeing, a new pain flashed in his eyes even as all of the physical pain ebbed away.


	23. Protection and protector

            He stepped over the threshold with his arms outspread, savoring the moment, holding his walking stick out with one hand and flexing the leather-gloved fingers of his other hand, taking a deep breath of the musty air in side.  

            "Ahhh," he sighed.  "Pity you can't choose your in-laws.  What a bloody heap."  So saying, he kicked aside a wooden chair, shattering it and sending the splinters scattering across the room.  His hawk flew through the open door behind him, alighting on his shoulder and surveying the room with eyes as cold as the silver eyes of his master.

             A wavering moan came from upstairs, followed by the sound of something hitting a wall.  Smiling nastily, Lucius whistled under his breath, knocking his stick into the walls as he walked slowly up the steps.  Shrugging his shoulder roughly, he sent the hawk flying ahead of him.  

            Dea worked as quickly as she could, not hearing the walking stick but instead hearing the sounds of Remus's change in the next room.  

            Severus said nothing as she shored up the last of his injuries, but kept his head turned away from her, his eyes on the wall.  Even unconsciousness would be better than this, he thought, more merciful than the bright, keen awareness that was settling over him with her wand and her words.  Better than the images he'd unintentionally grasped from her mind.  His mouth was set in its customary thin, hard line, and he stayed silent. 

            She never heard the impossibly large, sentient wolf slip in, only felt it when he closed his teeth on the hem of her robe and tugged.

            He wanted her to go.  Of course he did, with the threat of Malfoy lurking outside.  But she shook her head.  "Remus, let go.  I'm not leaving.  I'm not leaving him here."

            "He's fine," Severus said of himself, the sneer apparent in his voice, the defensive mechanism back in place.  "So you can leave him here."

            The hawk swooped past the doorway, bringing Remus's head and attention to it with a snap.  

            Lucius saw as the predatory bird saw, the three gathered in a room like ducks in a row.  Its visions crowded his head, swooping and dipping.

            "I see you," he cooed softly, his voice sliding through the hallway.  "Onesies, twosies, threesies-three, I see a birdie in a tree."

            Knowing the voice, remembering the words from her dream, Dea's throat locked tight in fear.  She'd thought him outside, still stumped by the riddle of the Black house.  But he was feet away, drawn there by her ignorance.  Drawn there by her arrogance.  

"Hide, Remus," she hissed, then turned to Severus.  "Can you move?"  When, stubbornly, he didn't answer her, she shoved at him rudely.  "Now's not the time, Severus, please!  Can you move?"

            The Potions Master said nothing but turned his haunted eyes back to her even as the wolf pressed its body against her side protectively.  He sat up, sliding from the bed and standing, nausea swamping him in a wave, his vision blurring.  It had been too long since he'd stood, since he'd moved, and his inertia was shot. 

            "Go," she hissed, drawing her wand upright.

            "I'm not leaving," he said snidely, fixing his eyes on the doorway where he knew Malfoy would appear in an instant.  "Because really, Dea, what are you going to do?  _Scourgify _him to death?"

            The hawk swooped again, and this time Remus moved for it, partly out of instinct but mostly out of strategy.  The movement, he hoped, would draw fire, and in drawing fire, give Amadea and Severus a chance to escape.  In one powerful lunge, he had the hawk trapped in his jaws.  He bit down and shook his head from side to side, filling the hallway with feathers and bringing a mindless shriek from Malfoy.

            "Filthy!" he screamed, and Dea's mind skittered hysterically over the notion that he sounded a great deal like Mrs. Black.  "Filthy abomination!"  He pointed his wand, running down the hallway after the wolf and waving feathers out of his face.  But the wolf had turned into another room—which one?

            Severus slipped his hand back, onto the bed where his wand lay, and grasped it firmly in his hand.  He'd failed already in the final mission, and the last thing he wanted was to do it again.  It was the mark, he knew, of a Slytherin.

            Failure was not permitted.  

            As he walked forward, reeling from the hours of inactivity, the sheer exhaustion of the past several days, he could feel her fingers slip ineffectively on his robe, hear her voice, tinny and pleading in his ears. 

            And the timing was perfect, for Severus stumbled into the doorway just as Malfoy ran past, the loyal Death Eater's long strides faltering when he saw his former comrade standing in the doorway.

            "_Avada kedavra," _Severus shouted, and this time there was protection for Dea, protection for himself, and though it pained him to admit it, protection for the werewolf that had bravely drawn fire. 

            Protection he hadn't been able to give before, when the bastard had struck her down with his ostentatious walking stick.

            Lucius never saw it coming, his eyes torn between the disappearing werewolf and the dark figure at his side, he'd never dreamed he'd be taken down in such a way.

            Malfoys weren't ambushed.  They weren't surprised.

            It was the last thought he had before the green light hit him, and he knew no more.

~~~

            Now they came.  Less than a day later, when a corpse lay stiff in the house's basement, his face still stamped with a grimace of rage, they came.  It was all over by the time they started streaming through the doors.

            "We didn't know—"

            "Disturbances all around town, Death Eaters wreaking havoc all over—"

            "They were creating too many distractions, we didn't know what was going on here—"

            "_We _did, we just thought we'd let you handle it."  That comment, predictably, came from one of the Weasley twins, whose jesting was offset by his pallor.  

            The remaining Death Eaters, as it turned out, had been more organized than they themselves had thought, their uncoordinated efforts at causing chaos keeping all members of the Order busy—too busy to know what was going on at their headquarters.

            Charlie Weasley strode to Severus's side, his large, thick form nearly dwarfing Severus's thin one.  Without a moment's hesitation, he extended a huge hand to Severus, his face earnest.  "I owe you several apologies, mate."

            "Yes, I tend to agree with you on that matter, Weasley," Severus said, smirking a little.  But he extended his hand, knowing it would surprise the boy.  Charlie gripped the thin, fine hand 

enthusiastically, shaking it with an energy that made Severus's head ache.  For one brief moment, he wondered if Dea would know how to heal the bones in his hand, then he was released.

            He didn't belong here, no matter what his noble actions had been.  He knew it as surely as he knew his own name, as surely as he knew the contents of his supply room back at Hogwarts.  A lifetime of darkness had brought him up to the Unforgivable, to the flash of green that had ended Lucius Malfoy's life, and he didn't belong here because some part of him, much bigger than he liked to admit, had been pleased at that flash of green.

            It had been lies from Malfoy which directed Severus to the Death Eaters, and Malfoy's sick glee that had uncovered the truth about Dea's family.  It had been Malfoy who had stricken the tangerine lark flying through his house, sending her home bloody, bruised, and broken.

            And when the evil, vile bastard had fallen dead in the middle of the hallway, Severus Snape had stood over him, dark hair straggling into his eyes, and he hadn't felt a bit sorry.  

            By the time people stopped entering the house, he'd been thanked dozens of times, congratulated for some odd reason, and turned into that which he'd always mocked—a bit of a celebrity.  Order supporters who he didn't even know were treating him like a hero.

            He wanted desperately to get away; of all those people who'd shaken his hand and spoken to him in the hours following Lucius Malfoy's attack, there was one who had not approached him at all. 

            She stood alone in a corner of the room, alone as she had been ever since he'd risen and killed Malfoy.  Even as Lucius had struck the ground, her wand had fallen from her fingers, clattering to the floor of the bedroom they'd deposited him in, and she'd walked out silently, brushing past him as though he weren't even there.  His adrenaline-addled mind had heard a door shut somewhere down the hallway, and when he'd gone looking for her he'd encountered Remus, his thick pelt shining even in the dim hallway.

            No matter what their animosity, no matter what their history, the moment had been clear enough when the wolf put his paws at Severus's feet and laid his snout to them.  And though they'd both longed to go to her, both longed to continue looking for her, neither did.  

            Now she stood by herself, regarding the assembled company with a faint smile written on her features.  If he hadn't known better, Severus would have said she was pleased with herself and pleased with the way things turned out.  But there was pain in those dark eyes, and he could see something in her he'd thought long gone—the wish to be invisible.

            And the man whom Severus was certain was at the root of that pain, Remus stood across the room, looking none worse for the wear after his night of animalism.  He carefully avoided looking at either of them but instead seemed to accept Harry as his charge.

            Sparing a glance for the boy, the famed Potter, Severus knew with startling clarity why he felt he didn't belong.  

            What he'd done hadn't been brave; it was merely a matter of survival and a matter of revenge.  Bravery was what he lacked, and as a Slytherin, brave acts were few and far between.

            He thought perhaps he had one left in him before he retired gratefully to his dungeons, his potions, and his solitude.  After all, only she had ever been able to touch that solitude, and he knew she would have other matters to attend to.

            So he crossed the room to her, shaking his head slightly.  "I see what you're thinking, Middlemarch.  But you may as well forget it; you couldn't get away with it in a room like this."

            She brought her eyes to his, dark meeting dark, and there was no surprise on her face, no confusion.  "You're right about that.  People as sharp as these aren't fooled by a watered-down schoolgirl invisibility spell."  Rolling her shoulders, she risked a glance at Remus.  After being ignored for several days, who could blame him for not talking to her?

            "I was wrong."  The words slipped from Severus's lips, spoken for the first time.  A pureblood admitted no wrongdoing, his father would have said.

            _Those days are past, you overbearing wretch, _Severus thought.

            Now her brow furrowed in confusion, she shook her head.  "Wrong?"  She was just as much perplexed that he'd spoken to her at all—she hurt for him but didn't know how to say it, didn't know how to apologize for things he had seen, for things that hadn't been meant for his eyes.  

            "Your name.  I was wrong in labeling it a misnomer."  He raised his chin then, looking down his nose at her in a habit that would likely never be broken.  "It seems you are beloved after all, Dea."  And with that, he cast a long look at Remus.  In his opinion, the werewolf wasn't worthy for her, Severus thought, but who was?

            Completing the circle, she raised her hand to his face once more, marveling at how much it meant for a man as proud as he to take the step he'd just taken.  "I never felt otherwise."

            "Miss Middlemarch!"  Hermione tumbled through the crowd, her cheeks flushed and her eyes bright, and it was impossible to miss Ron standing behind her, looking equally happy.  "We just got here!  I wanted to say congratulations on a plan well-executed."

            "Wicked job, Snape," Ron said unthinkingly, his eyes growing wide in his freckled face, the gulp that followed so loud as to be audible.  "I mean… Professor Snape.  Sir.  Blast it all!"

            "Professor Dumbledore wants to see you, Dea.  Come on!"  Hermione, ever the organizer, beckoned insistently at Dea, who threw a backwards glance at Severus.

            He knew mischief when he saw it, and he suspected he wouldn't be seeing Amadea again that evening.  Thinking as such, he brushed off his robes and Disapparated without anyone noticing he'd done so.

            It was time to get back to the dungeons.


	24. And so it ends

            "And so then we heard what had happened and wanted to come straightaway, but of course there were Death Eaters all around the school.  It was quite amazing, Professor McGonagall and Mad-Eye really took care of it all in moments."  Hermione chattered gregariously, talking with her hands as they wended their way through the gathered people.

            "Where is Albus, Hermione?"  Dea couldn't help but be amused by the girl; at her age, at all the childrens' ages, they'd be resilient enough to move on from the trials fairly easily.  

            "In the kitchen."  Hermione stopped just short of the kitchen doors and looked boldly at Dea.  "I must say, it's really quite disconcerting to think that even when I'm adult, Professor Dumbledore will be able to summon me whenever he wishes."

            "You're a teacher's pet, it won't matter," Ron threw in, immediately dodging the backhanded slap aimed at his chest.  After a small scuffle, Hermione looked back at Dea.

            "I notice you and Professor Snape seem to have made up."  She'd been fascinated by the pair of them, and the addition of Remus, ever since the conversation they'd overheard between the two men outside Dumbledore's office.  It was romantic, really, Hermione thought.  

            Stifling a chuckle at the girl's nosiness, Dea tactfully ignored the comment.  "Thanks for all your help, Hermione."  Just before she turned, she mouthed "Take care of her" to Ron, following it up with a wink.

            She momentarily longed to be back at that age, back when things were more innocent.  But those times had been painful, as well, and she thought they were painful for everyone.  It had taken her too many years to see that. 

            Shaking off the melancholy thoughts, she walked through the kitchen doors and stopped short so that the door slammed her in the back.           

            Would the old wizard never cease his interference?  After all, how many times in her lifetime could he ambush her with Remus?  It hardly seemed fair that the tactic, which had worked fabulously back in her teens, still worked.  The two men sat at the kitchen table, cups of tea perched before them.  The kitchen was neater than it had been in months, and Dea had a moment to think that Molly Weasley had been afoot.

            "Albus," she greeted him stiffly.  "Remus."  Her eyes softened for him, but there seemed to be anger in his eyes as he looked at her, his long limbs carrying him across the length of the kitchen, then back.  He repeated the process, occasionally glancing at her as he paced.

            "Ah, good, we're all here," Dumbledore said, as though oblivious to the tension.  "Dea, I just wanted to thank you and Remus for running headquarters so—ahem—smoothly while we were gone."

            It was as though he wasn't even speaking, he thought with glee, watching the two them stare each other down. 

            "We're not finished," Remus said suddenly, as though starting in the middle of a conversation.  He shoved a hand through his hair, making it stand in all different directions, and stopped pacing to look at her.

            "Quite right," Dumbledore said, nodding sagely.  "The two of you are not, in fact, finished.  I have a bit of an assignment for you."  

            "I beg your pardon?"  But she wasn't speaking to Dumbledore; she was speaking to Remus.  She stared at him in disbelief, thinking of the last time he'd been so insistent—when he'd found out her plan to go to Lucius.

            "I've licked my wounds, so to speak, wallowing in selfish self-pity because you were busy healing a man who is more or less your ex, and then it occurred to me that wouldn't do."  Remus had been thinking on it, thinking way too much about her and about Severus and about himself.  It was ridiculous, really, how much you could think about love in the midst of death and hate.  "And I don't care if you still have feelings for him.  We started something here, and we're going to either continue it or finish it correctly, Amadea."

            Dumbledore calmly conjured a dish of candy and began eating while he watched the scene play out in front of him.

            "I was healing Severus because that's what I came here to do, Remus.  Heal.  And he's not my ex, and even if he were, what the hell would it matter?"  She wondered for a moment what was pumping them all full of childish idiocy, but her anger was rising so quickly she couldn't stop it.

            "You've both been through a great deal in the past several days, no one faults either of you if you acted irrationally or perhaps insensitively."  Dumbledore regarded a lemon drop as he said this.

            "Stay out of it!" Dea burst out, looking at the old man in exasperation.  "Good Merlin, Albus, must you be such a yenta?"

            He seemed to think over this for a moment, then nodded.  "Yes." 

            "I'm in love with you," Remus half-shouted, wondering if it were even humanly—or werewolvely—possible to get her attention for more than a few minutes at a time.  "Damn it, Amadea, why is it that when I most need you, you don't hear what I'm saying?"

            She'd heard that, though, loud and clear, and it had her eyes going stark and wide.

            Need.  Love.  They'd been words of another time for her, definitely words of another time.  

            _This is so messed up._

But it had been him all those years before who had come to her in need, in pain, and she'd fixed it, binding them both together.

            "You Gryffindors and your big productions," she said quietly, her ears ringing a little.  "You can't just say it like a normal person."  For a moment, she thought smoke was going to curl out of his ears, and she laughed softly, shoving her hands through her hair and wrapping her arms around herself, afraid to move, afraid to approach him.  

            She'd longed for adolescence again, and she figured you had to be careful what you wished for, because suddenly she felt young and foolish and awkward.  

            "You know, for instance, a Ravenclaw would state the matter rationally.  I've thought everything through, we've been through hell and back the last few months and still things seem good when you're there, so the logical conclusion is that I love you, Remus."  She said it slowly, nodding her head in affirmation as she did so.

            They stared at each other in silence, both of them unsure of what move to make next.  

            Then Dumbledore spoke.

            "As I was saying, I've a bit of an assignment for you.  Only Dea, I believe you'll need your wand for it."  When he saw that the two of them were going to do naught but stare at each other like a couple of fools, he gestured with his hands.  "Well, Remus, it isn't as though I have the wand." 

            "Ah… yes."  Remus moved forward quickly, the bright orange wand extended in front of him, and instead of grasping the wand directly, she put one hand over his and the other over the wand.  

            And with a broad, mischievous smile, Dumbledore pointed his wand, activating the Portkey he'd made of Dea's wand.  

            He figured the two of them would have a fine time in America.

EPILOGUE

            She was laughing.  That was the fact he registered first even as his feet touched ground.  His hands were reaching for her before he was balanced, but he was comforted by that laughter.  He'd heard it so rarely, but it sounded good.

            Remus looked around as she grasped his fingers in hers, her eyes turned wonderingly up to the sky.  There were people all around them, walking on the strange stone walk beneath them, jostling the robe-clad couple as they passed. 

            "Hey, you crazy schmuck, how 'bout you stand in the middle of the sidewalk?" a portly man asked as he shoved past them.

            "Where are we?"  Remus couldn't bring his voice above a whisper, the noise and bustle around him taking his voice away.  

            "America," she said, feeling her heart in her throat.  "Actually, we're right outside the American Ministry."  She glanced at the small, abandoned bookstore in front of them and was flooded with memories of her parents taking her to visit there before she'd went away to Hogwarts.

            _"We want you to see what you'll be able to do one day," her father said, boosting her onto his shoulders as he pressed a finger to the lock on the grate closing off the shopfront.  _

_            "It's really quite amazing," Gaylee chimed in, tugging at a long lock of her daughter's sable hair._

_            The lock depressed a bit and a chiming sounded deep inside the store.  In moments, they were opening the grate and stepping through, then—_

            It was a different kind of bustling than outside, Remus thought.  A more familiar bustling.  American witches and wizards swarmed through the lobby of the building, just as elaborate as the English branch, if a bit smaller.

            "Ah, there you are!"  A pudgy, older blonde witch hustled up to them, eating French fries out of the familiar red-and-yellow cardboard container that made Dea smile.  "You're our new ambassadors, I warrant!  Come this way."

            "Ambassadors?"  Remus repeated.

            "We need good people to be here, people who know the Death Eaters," the witch dropped her voice to a stage whisper as she said the last two words.  "So you're giving us a hand with that."

            _"Ah, there you are!"  The same witch, not quite as pudgy but drinking a milkshake, reached up and patted young Dea's cheek.  "You're the little visitor for the day, I warrant!  Come on, I'll show you around."_

            And how her mother and father smiled, so proud of their little girl who had escaped their handicaps…

"Amadea, are you all right?"  Remus stopped, oblivious to the witch leading them.  They'd traveled miles together, they'd risked death together.  They loved each other, he reminded himself with a smile.  The witch could damned well wait.  

            "I'm fine," she said breathlessly, facing him and knowing that it was right, for her to be here and for her to be here with him.   She caught the sleeve of his robe before he could walk away again and gathered the material into her hand.  "Remus, why do you do that?"

            "Do what?" he lowered his head to better hear her and, to try and sate the urges he'd had for days, he brushed his lips over her forehead.

            "You never call me Dea.  Only Amadea."  She'd wondered on it now and again, but had never questioned it.  She liked the way it sounded on his lips.

            "Because you are, you know?"  When she shook her head in incomprehension, he grinned.  "Beloved."

            And when she stood on tiptoe to kiss him, she heard Severus telling her the same thing and saw her parents in her mind's eye, and she knew things were at least starting to be right.

            The war was over. 

_Stay tuned for a peek at the last story in the "Beloved" trilogy,_

_"Wounded of a War"_


	25. Wounded of a War

*** A tiny preview of "Wounded of a War", coming soon!***

            He was bitter, unhappy, and who could blame him?

            Everyone in the world who had loved him, or at the very least, claimed to, was dead.  His name had been smeared over the wizarding world like so much mud, and instead of grief, what he felt was shame.

            And then, to add insult to injury, he'd been forced to come here—to Hogwarts.  

            "I don't want to be here," Draco Malfoy said, crossing his arms over his chest and casting his eyes away from his Head of House—the man who had killed his father.

             "I'm afraid you have no choice," Severus said, templing his fingers together and ignoring the roaring headache that had cropped up when Draco had been brought to him.  He'd resisted the responsibility, knowing full well that the boy wouldn't be able to think of anything but his father's demise, and who had been reponsible for it. 

            But instead of treating Severus with hate, or even distaste, the young man had thrown himself into the chair across from the Potion Master's and proceeded, in his emotional turmoil, behave like a ten-year-old. 

Taking a deep breath, Severus prepared to speak, only to be cut off by the sullen youth across from him. 

            "If you're about to apologize, you may as well can it," Draco said, his voice only fractionally holding its harshness.  "I know you're not sorry for killing him, and if you were sorry, I wouldn't be sitting here." 

            "Explain yourself." 

            "He deserved it, didn't he?"  Draco sat up straight in his chair, feeling clear for the first time since his world had come crashing down around his ears.  When all he got from Severus was a wide-eyed look of shock, he scoffed openly.  "Oh, come off it.  You think I didn't know?  I lived with the man for nearly twenty years.  He treated my mother like little more than a house elf, and me?  Well, I was to be perfect, and when perfection was lacking, I was to be disciplined."  He cast his eyes to the side then, disgusted with himself for the outburst. 

            But one more thing had to be said, the one thing that had been weighing him down more than anything, compiling the shame into something personal, something tangible. 

            "He killed my mother, did you know that?"  Draco raised his silvery eyes to Severus's and smirked, masking the pain he felt for the only family he'd really had.  "He killed my mother, and for that alone, I'd have done exactly what you did." 


End file.
